


The Unpromised Land

by goddamnitaisha



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Gen, My friends keep telling me it's a shame it's so under-read, Some Romance, for teens, meant as a novel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-14
Updated: 2018-03-07
Packaged: 2018-10-05 02:58:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 29
Words: 77,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10295891
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goddamnitaisha/pseuds/goddamnitaisha
Summary: Quality story you never knew you needed. Fix-it fic for minor characters that grow to meet major characters. Reads like a YA novel. I'm 26 and write well.STORY: Orphan Moogle Girl sets out to revive Sephiroth.It's a General Audiences fic, my friends tell me "it'a a shame it's so under-read".SUMMARY: ‘Moogle Girl’ Megara meets a Turk who takes her off the slum streets to work in the HoneyBee inn. She brings back Hojo who takes her to the ShinRa labs. She starts an army, to revive Sephiroth, becomes powerful enough to threaten Rufus Shinra. She revives Sephiroth in a dying world. I did not Mary Sue this development.Moogle Girl wants to find a home in a dangerous world. People try to use her, monsters spawn everywhere, the Planet is dying, and she finds herself pitted against the Shin-Ra Company.





	1. Chapter 1

 

\- "Tired of living on the streets?"

They called her Moogle Girl, because she carried a plush toy of a Moogle with her. She took care of that little toy. She could take care of herself, too.

"Of course you can take care of yourself," the stranger had replied. He had remained in front of her, stepping so close he almost stepped on her hands. "But how about real 'taking care of?' A friend of mine is looking  for girls your age. Pretty girls."

She hadn't been called pretty before. Not often, at least. It got her interest. She sat up from the asphalt, and the sun that she had lounged in now glared into her face. She lift her hand to look up to the Reaper in front of her and shielded her eyes with her hand. The man was a black outline, with the sun right next to his left ear. Kids called them Reapers because they took children off the streets and those were never seen again. But Shin-Ra and the WRO took children off the streets too, so nobody really bat an eyelash.

Reapers didn't talk to anyone except if they found your interesting, then they would talk with you for long. A while ago the Moogle Girl, or MG, had spotted a Reaper talk to Dany for hours. Afterwards she had asked Dany what it had been all about, but the boy had kept his lips pressed together so tight they'd turned white.

Maybe this was a chance to find out for herself.

The Reaper continued: "I have a good deal for you. It's the same as what happens out here on the streets, the same risks, but you will get paid."

"Paid?"

"Paid," he dropped a pause to stress the word. "...per day. And with that money you can rent a room - one that's furnished with a large bed, and a desk, and a closet and a vault where you can keep your money."

MG knitted her eyebrows and hugged her knees a little tighter.

"... and one of us cooks, so for a small fee you get two meals a day. Proper meals. None of those binscraps you're eating there." He nudged with his foot to the newspaper on her left.

She quickly pocketed the moist cold fries. They had been a lucky find. It was rare for people to waste anything organic, especially food.

"I don't believe you," she said.

"Then you don't."

He remained in front of her.

She kept looking at his black outline. "Are you afflicated with Shin-Ra?"

"No."

She didn't trust the Shin-Ra Company. They said they shipped children off to orphanages on the countryside, but she'd never spoken a child that had ever come back. And the ones who had come back, mostly on foot, talked about large houses and hard labour and difficult learning. Where the other kids went, she didn't know. Every month more of Shin-Ra's horrors came to the light, and although she didn't have a television to follow the news, the electronics store did display the news, and what she saw, she didn't like at all. Especially not after Omega. That still gave her nightmares, and made her hate storms.

"Then who do you work for?"

The muscles in his face changed. From his outline, she could tell he was smiling, even if she didn't see the teeth.

"I work for the Butterfly Inn."

"The whore house?"

"The Inn," he stressed. "People can rent a room, eat, gamble, stay overnight. People from various standards visit. Our last Inn was visited by high Executives and even President Shinra Senior himself.  Nowadays we have businessmen and woman, WRO officials, and some Shin-ra officials, but we are completely neutral. Completely neutral. Anyone can stay with us, and you're welcome to do so. Maybe some high official will fall in love with a pretty girl like you."

MG brushed her sleeve over her cheek and looked down.

"I would fall for you," he continued. "but I think you've got better chances at the Butterfly. A girl like you isn't supposed to stay on the streets."

She looked at her hands.

"....where everyone half-drunk can get a handful. You're clever, and intelligent. I see it. You are made to be more."

The compliments were hard to digest.

"I don't want to be a whore."

"You won't be a whore. You'll be a waitress at first, and cook."

That made her look up. "But I don't know how to cook."

He stepped in front of the sun and she could finally lower one of her hands. His smile was still in place. He had all of his teeth. "One of the girls will teach you. It's not that hard."

"I will mess up. I'll make the food-"

"Hey, don't advertise yourself so bad: if you do end up wanting the job... you need to give the impression you are a good worker. I know you can do it. You're a smart girl. You will think this rare opportunity over."

It was a rare opportunity indeed.

"You can start as a waitress and cook. The girls will teach you. Lodging and food is free during the first week.  You can keep the money you earn. It's all yours. And if you don't like it, you may walk out any time and no one will come after you. But you'll make friends with the girls."

When was the last time she had slept in an actual bed? Sheets, mattress... even if she left after a week, at least she'd sleep have slept in a bed and earned money. Working as a waitress or cook didn't look too bad."

"I don't have to work as a whore?"

"Not if you don't want to."

"Really?"

"I'm offering you a job," the Reaper said, and he spread his hands so his black jacket fanned out at the ankles. "Just a job, and food, and a place to stay, and safety. If anyone harms you, then you've got big guys like me who will break their elbows and throw them out. No one touches our girls."

_You'll be safe._

The unspoken promise hung between them. It was hard to deny that the offer was more than attractive. It sounded so good she was almost inclined to say yes immediately.

"I'll think about it," she said.

"You do that," he said. He stuck out his hand.

She took it. He had been just willing to shake hands, so when she pulled herself up to her feet, he lost his balance. She almost pulled him over in the process. He took a step forward to stabilize himself, and pressed his knee to the inside of her thighs. His face came close to hers, and he reeked of alcohol and perfume. She watched his face from up close, and saw he was clean shaven.

"Pretty girl," he said again.

She squirmed.

He immediately let go, much to her surprise.

_I have a good deal for you. It's the same as what happens out here on the streets, the same risks, but you will get paid._

But she didn't have to become a whore, she could become a waitress and get noticed by a charming man while serving him food, and marry her way out of poverty.

The Reaper stepped back, straightened his coat, and brushed his fingers over it to flatten the wrinkles. "What do you think?" he asked. "Would you like to come with me right now?"

"Right now?"

"Do you have anything you are leaving behind?"

No, she didn't. There were some other kids and teens... but if she suddenly left, the won't really notice. Not until after a while. She said: "It seems so sudden."

"Of course," he said. "Of course it's sudden. But there's a time limit, as ther are not always positions available. A lot of girls want to work at the Butterfly Inn, but I chose you. And you do understand that if you talk about this job offer and advertise the Inn around all of your friends, the job may be given to some other... more eager person. And you'll be here on the streets. And that would be a shame, you know? You really give off a vibe that you're made to be _more_."

"More... what?" she asked, curiously.

"You tell me!" he smiled. "What is your dream? Some girls leave after a while once they have saved up enough money to buy an education. They go to school and end up becoming the most powerful women. One of our girls was in an Anti-Shinra terrorist group and brought Shin-Ra down to their knees. Bam."

_Bam. Just like that._

"Will you come with me?" he asked again.

MG thought about it a little, and then went to her knees to pick up her moogle plush toy. She held it to her chest. "I'll think about it. Where can I find you?"

"Aurora bridge, below the statue of the angel."

"The one with the one broken wing?"

"Bingo. That one." He gave her a thumbs up. "If you come before noon, you've got the job. After that, I'll scout for another girl."  

"I'll think about it," she said, when she really wanted to say, _I'll be there_.

He turned around, and began to walk away.

"Wait!" She took a few steps after him. "What's your name?"

"Call me Two-Guns."

"That's a weird name."

He laughed. "It's the only one I've got. What's your name?"

"They call me Moogle Girl. Or MG."

"You're not a girl any more. You're a young woman."

\- "My real name is Megara."

"Megera," he said, and tasted the word on his lips like it was something special to him. He gave her a crooked smile. "Powerful name for a powerful girl.... fit for a goddess."

The word echoed in her mind. _Goddess, Goddess..._

He turned, then lift his hand. _See you tomorrow._  He didn't speak the words, and she stared at his trademark black reaper-coat until he disappeared in the shadows. The sun was getting closer to the horizon. Its rays had lost their warmth, but now there was a warmth growing in her chest.

Hope.


	2. Chapter 2

“Look who showed up.”

Moogle girl, MG, checked left and right before she crossed the asphalt street. The Reaper was standing half in the shadows as if he was part of them. He looked at her and then took a long drag of his cigarette. He blew out yellow smoke that lingered in the air before it fell apart in tiny strings and disappeared.

She stopped in front of him, and a car rushed past behind her back.

Two-Guns beckoned. She stepped closer to him.

"So, Megara… did you make up your mind?”

She shrugged.

He lift his eyebrows. “Have you come to tell me you don’t want to work at the Butterfly Inn?”

“No-” she said, “I mean, yes. I want to work there. Trying to sleep under a bridge during a sandstorm…”

“It does put things into perspective, doesn’t it?” He asked. He reached out, and tugged one of her brown pigtails.

She slapped his hand

away. If he wanted to see the sand in her hair, he could use his eyes, not his hands.

Two-Guns’ mouth opened until the cigarette hung on his bottom lip, held there by the saliva alone, or it would drop onto the street.

She lowered her arm, and glanced away. She folded her arms around the moogle plush toy.

“You’ve got fight in you,” he said. He made it sound like a compliment, while she just thought of it as self-defence.

She shrugged.

“Come with me. The girls will give you a nice cool bath, and wash your hair for you. You’ll come out reborn.” He took another long inhale through his cigarette, and the tip lit up with warning red. Then he turned. He nudged with his head for her to follow.

She stepped after him, then sped up to walk by his side. His steps were bigger, and his legs were longer. Ever so often she needed to double-step to keep up with him. He was tall. And if it hadn’t been for the scar on his face, he’d have been handsome too. He was older though, much older than she was.

The Butterfly Inn was a luxourious place, or at least, it looked like that. There was wood on the floor and TV screens overhead. The people inside were all smiling. There were tables near the entrance, and two waitress girls greeted Two-Guns with hellos that held a rich aroma of warmth in the tone, and instinctively made MG move closer to him.

He looked down on her from the corner of his eyes, and he put his arm around her shoulders. His coat made a creaking noise.

A smile appeared on her lips, and though she wasn’t used to the affection…it did feel nice. She felt taken care of. Two-Guns was nice.

The bath they gave her was heavenly. She didn’t remember the last time she’d gone in a real, cold, bath. Water was precious in the desert. There were Shin-Ra established free public washing facilities slum mongrols could go to, but they were as dangerous as they were needed. The plastic boxes were almost always group showers, and the water was recycled. She only went when it was that time of the month, and always made sure she and a group of girls went at the busiest time of the day when any predators would be too at risk to try something illegal. Still, being naked and stared at by strangers wasn’t her favourite pasttime.

“Don’t be shy,” the girl that soaped up Megera’s hair said. “No need to pull up your legs. We’re all girls here at the Butterfly Inn.”

“All of you?” MG asked. She felt her head tugged by the woman’s hands, and she closed her eyes for the soap. She tilted her head back a little

“All of us. This place is run by woman,” she answered.

“Then how about the Reapers? Like Two-Guns?”

“Reapers?” the other woman laughed. “We call them Angels. Angels like him protect us. And Two-Guns is just one one of Don Cornelis’ -that’s the guy who owns the establishment- personal bodyguards Sometimes he scouts for new girls. He makes sure they are OK. So, alright, we’re not completely run by women, but we’re powerful enough to make most of our own decisions. The Don just runs the management and finances. My god, there is so much sand in your hair… I’ll have to rinse and wash it again. Where do you live, in a desert?”

MG giggled.

“The sandstorm got you good. May I wash it again?”

“I don’t mind,” MG quickly said, and a little smile tugged a her lips. This feeling of being cared for was really nice. She let the foreign hands go through her hair, and sighed.

“I’m going to use Sterling Silver Shampoo. Your hair might get a silver shine after this.”

“Look at you,” Two-Guns complimented her at dinner. She put the plate in front of him, but he didn’t notice the meal. He kept his eyes glued to her form. The black low-cut shirt revealed a lot of cleavage, and the skirt didn’t lie about her legs. “I almost don’t recognize you back.”

She smiled quietly, and didn’t really know what to say. She looked at his scarred hands and then to the side. The dining area was bustling with people and conversation, and she had many tables to serve. It was difficult to keep track of who wanted to eat what. She should go to the next table, but Two-Guns was here…

He reached out to touch her hair.

She slapped his hand away, but he caught her wrist before she could do anything. He smirked: “Won’t fall for that twice, Megera.” He yanked her hand down so she stumbled forward. She put one hand on the wooden table.

He dipped his nose into her brown hair, and inhaled. “Mmm… rose… and vanilla.”

She felt her cheeks suddenly burn with heat.

He let go.

She straightened up so quickly that she bumped over his glass. The Shin-Ra beerglasss landed on the table with a tick, and spilled the fluids over the surface. The yellow liquid spread and dripped onto the floor.

“Oh! I’m terribly sorry!”

“It’s alright. It’s your first day after all.” And he brushed a finger over her arm.

After cleaning it up, one of the girls behind the bar took her apart: “When you clean something up, try to do it without going through your knees. Keep your back straight and reach down.”

“Why?”

The other girl struggled for words. Eventually she settled on: “It’s… more… elegant?”

At the end of the day, MG did get paid - just as Two-Guns had promised. It was more money than she had seen in years, but had to hand in five gil because of the drink she had pushed over.

One woman lead her up a stairs into a corridor furnished with red carpet. At the top of the stairs was a guard that looked as impressive as Two-Guns. The carpet was soft under her new shoes.

The woman unlocked a door, and behind it lay a bedroom. There was a closet and desk and bed, just as Two-Guns had promised. The room bathed in red light.

“The bed is so big!” MG rushed in, and leapt onto the sheets. The mattress bounced back under her weight, and she pushed her nose into the fresh sheets. She lay with her legs and arms stretched into an X, and ran her fingers over the sheets.

“It’s all yours,” the woman said. “I’ll put the keys of the room and vault on your desk. Enjoy your new room.”

MG tossed onto her back, and sat up. “You’re not staying?”

“I’ve got work to do. Evenings are the busiest.” She smiled, and closed the door.

It took a while for the girl to figure out exactly what that meant. She fell back on the bed. It was big enough for two people. She ran her bare arms and legs over the sheets. She kicked off her high heels, and sighed out.

Her mind went over the events of the day, and she thought about the sandstorm, the bath, washing the dishes, and Two-Guns’ finger running over her arm. He really wasn’t that bad, for a Reaper. Or no… Angel. Maybe he really was an angel.

She smelled her hair, and it smelled like hyacinth and candy.

I could fall asleep here…

She shoot into an upright position, her brown eyes wide open.

Where’s Moogle?

She remembered putting it down somewhere safe, but didn’t remember exactly where. Had it been before, or after getting a bath? Had she put it down under a table or onto a stairs? Behind a door?

There was a knock on the door.

She kicked herself into standing up straight, and raced to the door. “Hey have you seen my-”

Her face slammed into a plush white mouth.

“Mwah,” Two-Guns said, and then her hands clasped over the toy and pulled it from his grip. She looked at the doll, inspected it at all sides. The seams were intact, and so were the wings, and the pompon. “You washed it!”

“I had it washed, yes,” he replied calmly.

She looked at him with big eyes. “All the colours are bright again!”

“That’s what happens if one washes it,” he said lazily. He leaned one elbow against the doorframe as she turned her moogle up-side-down and pulled at the tiny wings. He watched her calmly.

She clenched the Moogle in her arms.

He lingered at the door. He leaned in a little to her. He looked at her lips. This time he wasn’t smoking, and his gaze moved to her hair, then went back to her lips. “Don’t I get a thank-you?” he asked.

She stared at him.

He took one step into the room.

At that moment, a person next door moaned. It was a male voice, loud enough to carry through the wall.

Two-Guns squeezed his eyes shut. He grimaced, understanding the moment was now ruined.

She felt herself becoming red again. “Thank you.”

If anything, he looked a little disappointed. He stepped back. “You’re welcome. See you around.”

He turned around lift his hand in the greeting, and walked back to the corridor. She moved to the threshold and looked at his back. The warm feeling in her chest now appeared to be a different kind of warmth.

For the first time in a while, life was going well. She had a roof above her head, a real roof, and a job. She had more money burning in her pocket than she had ever dared to steal, and no one would take it away from her. She had keys to lock her room, and Two-Guns would post outside of the building all night to ward off unwanted folk.

Two-Guns…

Yes, the feeling in her chest had definitely changed. She felt much lighter. She undressed, and slept under the sheets stark naked, hugging her moogle like he would maybe one day hold her.


	3. Chapter 3

“Good afternoon, ladies,” Two-Guns said as he stepped into the Butterfly Inn.

The two other waitresses -one behind the bar, and one cleaning tables- gave him dazzling smiles that the Moogle Girl, MG, had learnt to identify as flirts, and started to loathe. They could summon those plastic smiles for every customer that entered, and flirted just as easily with a guy their own age as they flirted with a man that could be their grandfather. They were thoroughly fake, and MG hoped Two-Guns would look through that.

He looked at their legs.

She wasn’t sure that qualified.

“Two Guns,” she said, and rushed to pull a chair out for

him. It was just after lunch hour, and relatively calm again at the inn.

"Megera,” he said with a lazy smile, and walked over to the chair.

She glanced at the Head Waitress, who was lounging at the window sill and displaying her legs to the few people who passed by outside. Such was the rule - if you were lounging, you lounged at the windows and smiled at the passers-by so they would feel invited to come inside.

The Moogle girl took his order, and served his meal. She sat down across of Two-Guns as he ate. He bit into his sandwich. “You have a look on your face as if you want to talk about something.”

She glanced over her shoulder.

“Spill it,” he said.

“What happened to her?”

“What happened to who?”

“You told me about this legendary woman who worked at the Honey Bee Inn and got so powerful she joined a terrorist group that kicked Shin-Ra’s ass.”

“Oh, Aerith Gainsborough.”

The girl gained a dreamy shine in her eyes. “Aerith… so that’s her name.”

“Have you been chewing on that for the past two weeks? I’ve seen you look. Was this your question?”

She felt her cheeks become red. She had looked, yes, but not for that reason. He was just pleasant on the eye. And the scar on his face looked… kinda cool. She slammed her back into the chair. “No. No. I… hey - don’t change the topic. What happened to Aerith?”

“Her SOLDIER boyfriend beat her to death.”

“No way.”

“Do you know Cloud Strife?”

MG’s eyes grew big. “Cloud Strife did that? But he saved the world!”

“Yes,” he said. “And as far as I know, I would not trust Shin-Ra propaganda too much. Both times, he killed Sephiroth only after talking to Rufus Shinra. I think he’s still in league with The Company. But I shouldn’t talk about this too much.”

“Are you serious? This is bad.”

Two-Guns stuffed the last bit of his first egg-bacon-cheese sandwich in his mouth and used his finger to pop the crusts inside. He chewed a few times, then took a gulp of his beer. He chewed again. “Remember OMEGA?”

“Yes?” She still had nightmares everytime there was a storm.

“The guy that was involved with it, Vincent Valentine… The media showed his face everywhere. Black hair, red cape, claw? Remember him? I tracked him back. He’s an ex-Turk.”

“Really?” she asked. “Are you sure?”

He picked on his food. Then he opened his mouth to take a bit of the second sandwich. The scar on his face stretched wide, suspending as if the flesh was opening all over again. “I wouldn’t trust those ex-Turks too much,” he said. “One never really leaves Shin-Ra.” He swallowed. “…unless it is in a body bag. Was that all? I don’t really want to talk about this stuff.”

She moved back to the previous topic. “Did you know Aerith?”

“I had guard duty around her. A friend of mine was closer with her. Why are you asking about her, don’t you like it here? Want to leave? You can leave. Just step through the door, and you’re out.” There was a bitterness to his voice. “You’ve been here what, three weeks?”

“Three-and-a-half,” she said. She moved forward again on her chair, and put her elbows on the table. She leaned in. “They don’t pay me enough.”

That made him look up, and frown. “If they’re holding back money, then-”

“No, no, it’s not that,” she said. “They are paying me… It’s just… it’s not enough. When I take off the rent, and the money for meals, and sanitary products, there’s nothing left.”

He looked at her.

She drew a circle on the table with her finger, then wiped out the smudge with the palm of her hand.

“There is a drought, and the harvests keep failing-…” he started.

She interrupted: “I made money during the first week, that I’m using now to pay my rent. I already went back to only having one meal a day, but that isn’t enough.” She sent him a pleading look. “I don’t want to go back to the streets again. I want to stay here, with you and the girls. This is the first time in years that I’ve felt…”

“…good?”

She made gestures with her hands. “Like a decent human being,” she said.

“Oh,” he flashed her a trademark smile. “I am afraid I’m unfamiliar with that feeling. Decency is not my forte.”

She didn’t know what to reply to that.

He continued to eat. “Why don’t you work as a Butterfly?”

Whore. She duck her head between her shoulders.

“You’ll earn much more,” he said.

MG looked away, and leaned back. She crossed her hands over her chest. “I don’t want-…” she said. He waited for her to finish. She didn’t.

He uncrossed his legs and sagged on his chair, lounging like only a satisfied man could lounge after a big meal. He took her in. “When I recruited you, I said there were career options. You had sex before, didn’t you?”

I’ve got a deal for you. It’s the same as what happens out here on the streets, he had said before. …the same risks, but you will get paid.

Same as what happens on the streets…

She really did not want to go back to the streets. The luxoury life was too good. She had her own room, and her own bed, and a roof above her head. She didn’t want to give that up.

The uncertainty of the streets had loomed at her every time she had looked out of the window. The dangers of a girl alone at night were… big. Joining one of the slum gangs had seemed a safe option, for safety in numbers, but she had quickly learnt it wasn’t. The entry ritual consisted of group sex, and she had only narrowly made her escape. Every now and then when she encountered members, they still laughed at her or threw stones at her.

And there were other creepy people… men and women.

His words continued to come back to her, like an annoying song stuck in her head. I’ve got a deal for you. It’s the same as what happens out here on the streets, the same risks, but you will get paid.

“You have had sex before, haven’t you?” Two-Guns asked, now more insistent. He looked at her in a manner he hadn’t looked before.

“Y-yes,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest, avoiding his eyes. She felt like he was scanning her, and as if every secret she held close could be revealed to his gaze. It wasn’t pleasant. The Two-Guns she knew was gone at that moment, and replaced by a figure that was… dead inside. A black-clad shade of a man. Who was he really? He didn’t seem human.

She shivered.

Two-Guns seemed to realize what he was doing, and he stopped. His expression cleared. Light fell onto his face.

“MG…"He reached out for her, but she pushed her chair back. His hand hoovered, then he let it drop onto the table surface. He pulled it back to him.

"If you’re not comfortable about it, get someone you trust show you the ropes. Maybe one of the girls, if you’re into that. A… test-run of some sorts, to see if you like it again. Sex really isn’t that difficult. You don’t have to do it. And if you do your test run and like it, you can always say you only want clients under the age of thirty… or something.”

Thirty!

“You’re in control,” he whispered. “You’re the powerwoman, like Aerith. You will think about it, won’t you? And then you’ll ask a friend to do a test-run with you to see if you like it. I’m sure it will go fine.”

She still had her arms crossed, and looked at her sleeves. She then looked at his scarred hand. That hand shoved his empty plate in her direction.

They looked at each other.

Her eyes were big and full of worry.   
His eyes were dark and guarded.

He put his fists on the table, and pushed himself up. “Ah - break is over. I’ve got to go back to work.”

He walked by her, and left without saying a bye. She remained at the chair, and stared at her sleeves. She didn’t know for how long she sat there. Until her behind got numb. Her tummy grumbled.

“Moogle Girl!” the Head Waitress called. She waved her arm, and smiled a little. “If you’re going to sit, then at least sit with us at the window.”

MG got up, put his plate and glass in the sink, and joined them at the window. She leaned her head on the woman’s shoulder - and the other immediately put an arm around her. “Something wrong?”

“I’m… ” MG swallowed, and her voice got softer with every syllable. It was best to say it immediately, wasn’t it? She whispered: “I think… need someone to test-run me as a Butterfly.”

“Ah,” the woman replied, instantly stilling. She looked at MG, the back to the passers-by outside. She was quiet for a while, and held her a little tighter. Eventually she said: “Why don’t you ask Two-Guns?”

\- “Huh?”

“Two-Guns. You like him, don’t you? He’s an employee, so he knows how ‘it’ works. Plus, Don Cornelius won’t be against it. So why not?”

They looked out of the window together, and watched Two-Guns’ back as he pressed one shoulder against the wall and rolled up a cigarette. 

Hesitancy bottled up in the Moogle Girl’s throat and she felt nauseous. It was a way out of her problems, but a step deeper into the Butterfly Inn. And if it had to be anyone… Two-Guns was a good option. He was nice. But should she really do this? 

Megara just didn’t know, and it made her feel ill.


	4. Chapter 4

Should she become a whore or not? She didn’t feel like she had a choice. In the end, she didn’t know if she wanted to become a sex worker.  Once again she felt much too small and too young to make these decisions. But this was the way life had pushed her, and even though she didn’t want to be here, she had to deal with it… whether she wanted or not. 

And she felt she’d become a whore, whether she wanted it or not.

If it was for her own improvement, right? Maybe she’d even like it.

She didn’t say anything to Two-Gun when he walked by. The next day at lunch he grabbed her arm, but she slipped her wrist through his arm and went to the next table, head low.

At the last day of the month, when she hadn’t eaten all day, and crying herself to sleep, there was a knock on her door. he knocked on her door. “MG?”

She put her hand over her mouth, and wiped the snot away. She dried her tears on the sheets, and moved. up.

“MG?”

“I’m coming,” she whispered. She swung her legs from the bed, and quietly unlocked the door. She peeked through the slid, and saw Two-Guns. She hadn’t said anything, about money, but it was as if he had kept track of her financial situation. Tomorrow she wouldn’t make enough money to rent this room.  He’d come at the right time.

“May I come in?”

She opened the door an inch further.

He took it as a yes, and put his hand on the knob. He forced the door open. He pushed past her. like a tall back shadow, then closed it behind him. “Where are the keys, darling?”

She looked at the desk, but he was faster. He took the keys front the surface and locked the door with a mechanic swiftness that made her heart rise to her throat and throb there. She couldn’t breathe.

He had done this before, but she hadn’t. Not willingly.

“Two-Guns…” she started. She didn’t know where she wanted the sentence to end.

“Sit on the bed,” he said.

She had her back pressed to the wall, and that one comment made her press it harder against the wall. If she could, she wanted to melt with it, like Two-Guns had melted with the shadows the morning of the Reaping. He’d been at the foot of the train station and his coat had blended with the shadows, leaving only his head and shirt. If only she could…

“Ignoring me won’t make this easier,” he said softly. He turned and sat down on the bed, the big-big-big bed. Now she understood why it was meant for two people.

Two-Guns dragged his feet over the floor and clicked his heels together. His knees were spread wide, displaying the large bulge inside his pants that she tried very much not to look at. She liked his face though, and he was pretty, but she felt so ill she could hardly notice it. If he hadn’t been her crush, she wouldn’t have let him inside. Then she would have pressed her shoulder to the door and kept anyone from coming in.

But he was her crush.

Did that put her in some sort of illusory luxury position?

“Moogle Girl,” he said. He patted the sheets next to him.

She stayed still for a long time. And she looked at him, and he didn’t say anything. She didn’t say anything either. And it felt like the time she ha been on the edge of the swimming pool and curled her toes over the plank. The kids behind her had yelled and told her to jump -everyone jumped- and she had been just as scared as now. The water below looked faraway. It was a long tumble down, and if she’d fall on her tummy, it would hurt. She had looked over her shoulder to the other children and the children below, and coulndn’t really turn back. If she didn’t do it, what kind of coward would she be? She had climbed the stairs, waisted for her turn, this was her opportunity to take the big jump…

And she jumped.

And she stepped forward.

She watched herself walk to Two-Guns, like she was had been turned into a ghost and floated somewhere above her in the room, and could look down on the scene like a spectator. She watched the girl sit down next to him. The mattress dented in, but she could not feel it. He probably smelled of smoke, but she could not smell it. And she reached out and put a hand on the back of him neck, and she kissed him, but she could not taste it.

She was a spectator to the scene, and completely numb.

He stayed still, and just looked at her. He didn’t close his eyes in the kiss either, so she could see the blue specks in his irises. She could count the hairs on his eyelashes.

Two-Guns didn’t kiss her back.

When she realized this, she stopped. She took her lips from his, leaned back, and looked at him. He looked back. His eyes searched hers.

“You will really do anything to survive, won’t you?” he said. It wasn’t a question. 

She shrugged.

Two-Guns looked at her and then he unexpectedly wrapped an arm around her. He presssed her to his chest, and held her close. The top of her head fitted in the cup under his chin. She was so tense that she couldn’t really move.

“Relax,” he whispered. “I’m not going to have sex with you.”

The tension in her muscles seemed to pang like a baloon. She sighed out. She deflated, and curled up. She curled tiny form against his and it felt she melted against him.

“Oh kid,” he shushed, “you really are still a girl, huh? Moogle girl.”

She pressed her face in the high collar of his black coat. Her forehead pressed against his adams’ apple. He swallowed.

“Listen up. If anyone asks, we had sex, ok?”

She nodded.

“But I can’t guirantee about tomorrow,” he said. “Unless…”

She looked at down at the buttons of his shirt.  "Unless what?“

"Unless you help me out with something. Look, my job is to collect girls like you, make them fall in love with me, and then train them a little until they become sex workers.”

“You set this up!” She pushed him off. gained wings and flew to her feet. All her fears turned to anger, and then back to fear. “This was a trap?”

“Shhh,” he said. “Keep your voice down.”

It was after eleven, so all noises should be kept to a minimum, especially talking. Customers ought to feel as if they were in a dream filled with flowers and sex and butterflies, not some slum bordello with under-age and barely aged girls.

“You don’t have to get so upset,” he said. “Calm down.”

“You manipulated me!”

“Megara, I need you to calm down _right this second_.” There was a new tone in his voice that upset her even more, but at least she held still. She pressed her mouth shut, lips together until they were white.

“Sit down.”

She sat down.

Two-Guns tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “Good girl. Not just pretty, but you’re obedient too.”

“What do you want?” This time, she didn’t fall for the string of compliments. Whatever he wanted from her, if it was better than sex, she was inclined to agree.

“I have a few friends… They need to have a place that’s out of sight where they can talk, or store goods.”

“What kind of goods?”

“That’s none of your concern. But you have a vault, and you’ve got keys. With a pretty face like yours, no one will ask questions why they stop by. My friends will talk together, and you just sit beside them and keep your mouth shut. You keep your mouth shut. Can you do that?”

“I… can.”

“Good. I’ll send the first guys by tomorrow.”

“They won’t touch me?”

“They won’t touch you, I promise. As long as you keep it discreet, and help me, I’ll protect you.”

“And if not?”

“Would you like to look at me or look at the wall as I fuck you?” Two-Guns askd.

“I’ll do it,” MG agreed. “I’ll help you and your friends.”


	5. Chapter 5

“I don’t think they fit,” the Moogle Girl said.

The Butterfly Inn was busiest in the evening hours. The noise in the ground floor dining room, of the chatting and laughing and drinking men completely muffled the noises of the second floor, the bedrooms.

“Sure they fit,” said the girl that was helping her. “Let me adjust this strap-… and this one. Look! Now you’ve got wings!”

The Moogle Girl, MG, turned to look in the tall mirror that leaned against the wall. It had broken in three parts, and someone had stuck it together with tape. MG saw herself from three angles. One, the child from Midgar, secondly, the Geostigma-survivor slumrat. Thirdly, a long-legged teenager in tight black clothes wearing strap-on butterfly wings. Those appendages on her back made her status into that of an whore. MG couldn’t say if she had levelled **up** or levelled **down**.

She turned her other hip to the mirror. _Either way, I look…_

“… _Beautiful_ ,” the other girl said.

“I like the wings.”

“Wings symbolize freedom for those who have none,” the other girl said. “Let me adjust this strap.”

“People like us, hm?” MG moved her shoulders. “Look, when I move, they flap!”

\- “Stand still!”

MG couldn’t stand still then, and not the rest of the evening either. She had to fly because it was so busy in the restaurant, and everyone demanded her attention. The cooks laded her arms with plates, sometimes six at the time, and she was sent into the humid dining area. The air was laden with smoke, as if a dragon was among the guests. The grey clouds still made her eyes prick. 

“Table seventeen, table seventeen,” she murmured to herself as she manoeuvred trough the crowd. Someone grabbed her wing. The elastic suspended, and then slapped against her bum. She passed their table, and a group of men burst out in laughter. 

_That’ll be a bruise._

She had gotten better at telling apart types of men. The group that had pulled her wing was middle class and loud. The men on table seventeen were dressed nicer and had immediately stopped all conversation. Those were upper-class."Table seventeen - here you go,” she kept her back straight as she bend over to put the plates down, and the men enjoyed a nice long look at her cleavage. Her wings fanned out at both sides of her waist, displaying the red and cream of moogle colours.

Suddenly someone touched her leg.

The guy left of her put his pointer finger on the inside of her knee, then trailed his flat hand up her bare leg to the edge of her skirt.

MG froze. She felt the heat surge to her face. It had been like this all month, strangers touching her, but it was as if the wings made her absolutely irresistible. She didn’t mind a touch, but this was a hungry hand. 

It moved up. It touched the rim of her underwear.

MG stared at the customer. She opened her mouth to say something, tell him off, but she couldn’t find the words.

The Wutaiian man lift his chin and stared back at her. His eyes were black. _Dead inside._

“Well?” he asked.

He scared her. Her hands trembled as she distributed the plates over the table. All her attention

was at the hand on her bum. She thought everyone was looking at her, but no one said anything.

The stranger slipped his pointer finger into her underwear, lifting the rim. His fingernail was cold.

She looked up and to the door where the guard was supposed to be. But he wasn’t there. She wanted the hand out of her underwear, but didn’t dare to say anything. Her job didn’t allow her to verbally defend herself: tht’s what guards were for. But where was Two-Guns?

She looked around, but he was no where.

She put the last plate down in front of the man that was touching her. He continued to look at her with those dreadful dead eyes. She felt the happiness be sucked out of her body and replaced with cold.

The stranger pushed a slip of paper into her underwear. He ran his hand down her leg.

The sudden freedom made her blabber a “enjoyyourmeal” and turn. She rushed through the crowd and to the kitchen, and ignored the Head Waitress that called out her name with the obvious intention of giving her new plates to distribute.

She rushed through the kitchen, and stood at the far back. There, she pulled the slip away from her bum and unfolded it.

_"INVITE ME   10:30"_

That was it. A slip of paper with typed letters. It had no name, no significance, and no apology. She held it against the light. It was the normal weight.

“Moogle!”

“Coming!” She crumbled the slip of paper into her fist. She threw it in the bin of the peels and roots. She rushed back to the restaurant- and was immediately laden with plates again. She wanted to avoid table seventeen as much as possible, but they kept ordering alcohol, and thus she had to rush forth and back between the kitchen and the creepy man. 

The clock hit 10:30, and she put a big bottle of gin on the table. She felt her throat ache. “Would you like to come upstairs with me?”

The comment had the effect of a bomb dropping on the table. All the companions laughed but the creep. His eyes went wide - and then he brought up a hand ro rub the bridge of his nose. “I see discretion is not your forte.”

“Have a go,” the man left of her laughed.

“Break your dry streak of eight months,” another said.

“Fine, fine. Allright,” the man said. He put his hands on the table, and pushed himself up.

The other drunkards lift their glasses, responding with words of cheers. As they tried to down their liquid all at once, she grabbed his hand to pull him through the establishment.

He would _not_ let her hold his hand. He yanked it free.

She glanced over her shoulder as she walked ahead of him. He seemed to be close to scoffing.

They went by the front desk, where he paid for her services in advance. They went up the stairs. Every step made tension rise to her throat. If Two-Guns had held his promise, then the scary man behind her was one of his friends. If he hadn’t held his promise… this would be a very uncomfortable evening.

She unlocked the door to her room, and opened it. He was at least a head-and-a-half taller than her. He entered, glanced around the room once, then looked back to her.

She quietly closed the door.

A frown settled onto his black eyebrows. “I was told you would be subtle.”

She ducked her head between her shoulders. “I’m sorry.”

“It matters not any more,” he said. “They are drunk anyway. But next time, be more discreet.”

She nodded.

He scanned her, and she felt like he was x-raying her body and staring right into her soul. His expression betrayed nothing, and he didn’t speak up either.

She crossed her arms over her chest. “What now?”

He put a finger on his lips.

She stood with her back against the closet and watched him run his fingers over the walls, under the desk, and knelt down to feel under the frame of the bed. He took ten minutes to

inspect the room like a security detective, and it made her wonder if this man could perhaps be a spy.

When he was done, he patted off his hands on this slacks and pulled his jacket straight. He taught her what microphones could look like, and where to search for them. After that, he lay down on the bed with his hands behind his head, and lay there for the rest of his 30 minutes.

She sat down on her desk, her feet onto the seat of the chair. She looked around the room, searching for something to do. Her eyes drifted to him, and he was looking at her. 

As soon as she looked away, he appeared to be sleeping. But when she looked back - he was staring right at her asif he could tell the exact time he caught her interest. That happened a few times, and eventually she decided it was easier to ignore him.

She combed her hair in the mirror until it was smooth. She fixed her pigtails. She combed her hair. She tried a ponytail. Then a ponytail-braid. With her hand smoothening the hair against her scalp, she turned her head in front of a makeshift mirror of a spoon she’d borrowed.

“Take it out,” he said.

“Why?”

“It went out of fashion…” he averted his eyes. “…six years ago.”

“Oh.” She looked in the round side of the spoon again, then let her hair down. She ruffled it a bit up, until it stuck to all sides, then brushed it down again. “I suppose the thirty minutes are almost up. I’ll get the other person.”

She slipped from the table, and left the room. At the hallway she took a deep breath of air, happy to be out of the the cold man’s gaze. She went downstairs and as she decended, she saw Two-Guns. He was at the door. He nodded to a man in the corner, and that man stood up. He was fat.

She went to him, and saw the sweat running down his forehead. The beads dripped over his temples, into the collar of his long coat. She murmured if he wanted to come upstairs. This time, she was discreet about it. 

The Head Waitress gave MG a thumbs up. 

They passed by the front desk, he paid, and they went upstairs to her room. She lead him up to her room, where the Wutaian man was still waited.

“Did you bring as requested?” the creep asked, rising offthe bed.

In reply, the second man zipped his coat down, and shrugged it off his shoulders. He exposed a bulky sweater, and took that off too. That revealed the reason for his fat figure and heavy sweating: he was wearing a vest made of straps and pockets that contained numerous vials of a translucent liquid. The thumb-thick vials glowed up in green and red colours. 

MG’s eyes grew wide. _Mako! That’s liquid Lifestream._  She held her breath. _If the World Regenesis Organization or Shin-Ra finds out about this..!_

“Is it quality material?” The Wutaiian asked.

The man with the jacket frowned. “It’s the best.”

“May I try it out?” The man asked. He stood up from the bed, and approached the one with the jacket. He took one vial out, and weighted it carefully in one hand.“

"O-of course. At your own expense.”

That made the Wutaian man stop, and his eyes glided from the vial, to MG. He looked at her, then curled one pale finger. “Come here, Moogle Girl.”

“You want to test it on the whore?”

The cold-eyed man didn’t reply. 

“Come on, she’s just a girl.”

“Come here.”


	6. Chapter 6

“If you think I’ll drink raw mako, then you’re wrong!” said the Moogle Girl, MG. She looked from one man to the other, and walked backwards to the door. If needed, she could always bolt out. In fact, she was ready to bolt out and scream for a guard. It meant breaking the rule of silence on the bedroom floor… but Two-Guns would come to protect her.

“Keep your voice down,” the wutaian man said. He used his hands to smoothed his black suit, and he crouched down like he would do to address a child. He reached out one hand for her. “Come hither.”

MG looked up to the man wearing the vest made out of vials. The sweat was still streaming down his face and into his shirt. The -at least fifty- vials of liquid glowed up brightly and gave his skin an eerie green colour.

“Can you get me out of this vest first?” the other man asked. His eyes were pleading.

MG looked at him, and he seemed worried. The wutaian man made no move to help him, so she stepped forward and started to run her hands over the tiny belt buckles at his sides and shoulders. Ever vial was held by two straps of velcro, so the glass couldn’t slip out of the hold.

The Wutaian offered no helping hand. He stood, and watched.

MG sent him a dark look, but didn’t say anything. She ripped open the straps and buckles until the vest hung off the seller, and he sat down on the bed. He gently lay it down, and as soon as it lay on the bed, he sat up. He kept his eyes on the bottles. He stepped away from it slowly. When he’d taken one step, he rushed to the other side of the room. He put one hand on the door. He eyed the vials on the bed. He was panting now, and he ran his hands through his hair. He pushed his hair against his scalp, and breathed in and out. He sank through his knees, and put his elbows on his thighs. He stared at the floor.

“Keep it together,” the Wutaian said.

“Give me a moment, will ye?” the other man snapped.

“…” The Wutaian man looked at the ceililng and rolled his eyes.

MG looked from one man to the other, then retreated back to the desk. She put one foot on the seat, and sat down on the desk itself. Her plastic butterfly wings bumped into the back wall.

“What’s the quality?” the Wutaian man asked.

\- “Highest we can deliver.”

\- “I don’t believe you.”

“Then fucking test it out!” the courier said, pulling at his hair. He suddenly gestured to Megara, and his face was drained from colour. He wasn’t sweating any more, he looked pale. “Test it at your own expense. Test it on the girl, for all I care. This stuff is better quality than she’ll be able to appriciate.”

The man with the dead eyes looked at MG. “Have you ever had Rejoy before?”

“No,” she said.

\- “Do you know of it?”

“Yes,” she said. “But all I know is that it’s mako.”

“It cures Geostigma survivors,” the wutaiian started and MG’s eyes grew big. He continued with: “…at least, such is popular belief. You’re a survivor of the stigma yourself, aren’t you?”

\- “How do you know?”

He blew breath out of his nose as a manner of suppressing laugher, and he turned to the vials. His hands ghosted over the vials. “I presume the numbers refer to the reactor it was from?”

“Yeah,” the other man said. “Number 8 and 4 were out of order. Six and Seven were polluted by the fall of the plate, so 2’s got the best stuff.”

\- “And how can I be sure you didn’t just add food colouring to the red vials?”

\- “Stop shitting me, man! That stuff’s pumped directly from the Planet’s core. The Mako reactors may be shut down, but that doesn’t mean the pipe lines are out of order. Ever since the Big Storm, the amount of monsters there has been skyrocketing. The more monsters, the better the Rejoy. It’s quality!”

The Wutaian slipped one vial out of the vest, and held it up to the light. His face gained a green colour in the glow of the liquid. Then he slipped out a red vial, and held it up too. “What’s the difference?”

\- “Dunno, man. I just deliver the Rejoy. I can’t have any of it or my boss will hack my balls clean off.”

\- “But you tried it.”

\- “I tried the green, yes. Not the red. The red is experimental.”

“Ok.” A frown settled on the Wutaian’s face, and he turned to MG. “You will drink the Rejoy.”

\- “No, I won’t.”

He dipped one hand onto his black jacket, and pulled out a _gun_. He looked at her with the same, cold dead eyes from before. He put the gun on the desk she was sitting on, but kept three fingers on the barrel.

Megara stared at him, and then at the gun.

The man gave her a faint smile, as if to excuse himself. He looked polite.

“I-…”

“Careful now,” he warned.

Megara looked down to the gun. Her throat was dry. A high tone of adrenaline was in her ears.

“This one vial of Rejoy is worth more than any money you’ll make in a year,” he mocked. “Certainly more than your life is worth to me.”

If she called for help now. Which would arrive faster? Two-Guns or the bullet?

She locked eyes with the black-haired man, and gave the smallest nod. Every fibre in her system screamed she shouldn’t do it. This was dangerous.

He gave her the red vial. It weighted heavy in her hand.

“Put it against your lips and drink everything in one go,” he said. “As soon as the Rejoy touches the air, it evaporates. I don’t want all of us to get high.”

The Moogle Girl looked at the gun on the table, then at the vial in her hand.

\- “Go on.”

She screwed the lid off, and a cloud of red steam escaped from the vial. She quickly put it against her lips, and threw her head back. The red Rejoy streamed over her tongue as if it was hot tea. She swallowed once, twice, three times, and then lapped the inside of the vial with her tongue to get the rest out.

The Rejoy grew painfully hot in her tummy. It swirled inside her tummy, first clockwise and then counter-clockwise. It felt like she had eaten too little food again. She was starving. She was dying.

The vial slipped from her fingers. It fell onto the desk with a high _ting_ -sound, and rolled over it, then fell onto the carpet.

A burst of heat surged from her tummy, up her food pipe, to her throat. For a second she thought she would throw up, but then the flame that burned her insides moved up to her brain. Two hands wrapped around her head. The fingers put so much pressure against her skull that her eyes grew wide. The eyeballs bulged, and a red mist appeared at the sides of her vision.

Everything felt romantic. Everything felt angry.  She was so angry, furious, enraged.

The Wutaian man with the dead eyes looked down on her.

Everything wobbled. She was glad she was seated on the desk, because she could lean against the unstable wall. But if he could have kicked the man, she would have. Fucking psycho, with his stupid eyes and stupid gun. She should steal his gun and press it against the dot on his forehead. See how he would like being toyed with.

She hated him, hated everything! The slums, the sickness, the poverty, the whorehouse, the sandstorms, the entire world! 

And then the world disappeared.

Her senses shut down one by one. First she couldn’t see. Then she couldn’t taste the Rejoy any more, then not smell it. She didn’t know if she was breathing either. Her ears shut down. Silence greeted her.

Her body was picked up into the air, and she drifted. She drifted in a vast sea of darkness as if she was asleep under water.

_This is the Rejoy messing with my head…_

_Stupid Rejoy…_

_I should snap out of this…_

_I need to keep it together. I… I can get through this. Rejoy won’t last forever. It’s just a drug. It’s just a drug. And then I’ll shoot him through the head. I can get through this. Rejoy…_

A voice mixed with hers, and it was a whisper.

She didn’t say anything, and listened.

_Rejoy…._

_Rejoyn…_

She listened with all her might, and could barely discover a string of voices. They started out as whispers that talked criss-cross through each other, some were louder than others. 

Then she started looking for words she might understand.

_Rejoy,_ she called out to see if she’d get a response.

_Rejoy,_ they answered. _Rejoin… rejoin. Reunion…_

That word sparked a red-hot fear in her. That was the word the men in the black coats had uttered numerous times. Those with the silver hair, who promised to cure her and the other children of Geostigma.  

Oh, how she hated Geostigma! She hated the world!

_I…_ she thought. _I don’t feel so good. I need a doctor._

One voice answered, and this one was more clear than the rest. It was a man’s voice that sneered. The tone was equally degrading as it was uncaring. _Hush, child._ _Being overtly emotional won’t get you anywhere. Anger and fear are self-defence mechanisms to deal with threats in a sudden burst of adrenaline. Dealing with the source of conflict, either a person or a project, is a neutral action in itself. It will not bring you closer or further away from the threat, but merely limits the amount of possible outcomes. Acting on your anger or fear will cause you be more prone to making mistakes and then you might lose your mind for good. Calm down, girl. Focus on my voice. I’ll guide you through this._

Who are you?

_I’m a doctor. A scientist: the finest that ever lived._


	7. Chapter 7

Megara had a pained expression on her face. Her back sagged against the wall, and her knees hung over the edge of the desk. Her Butterfly wings of cream and red colours were pressed against the stones. They’d wrinkle.

The Moogle Girl didn’t mind. She had not felt so bad since Plate-fall.

The first quake had come during the day while she was at school. The tremble had shaken some books off the shelves. Some children had yelped - and then they’d just laughed. The teacher had reached down to pick up those books.

“Back into your seats!” he had said. “It’s just a little tremble. Megara, back to your seat!”

 _Back to your seat, back to your seat,_  echoed a hundred voices.

She had been on the street when the Plate fell. She was tall and male and had a girl at one arm. “Don’t worry,” Megara said with a bass tone voice she didn’t recognize as her own. “It’s not like the plate will drop.”

She was holding the windowsill with one hand and her walking cane in the other hand. She tried to stabilize herself, thought it was one of those damn new pills she’d taken that made her dizzy again. When she started falling, she was suddenly holding a piece of the window sill in her hand, but the window was gone and so was the wall.

 _Girl. Concentrate on my voice_ , the scientist said. _You are re-living your trauma through other people’s lives._

She was in the slums, and she saw the roof of her world coming down. One big iron triangle fell, and thousands of voices screamed at the same time.

The entire world screamed. Then there was a crash of the plate hitting the slums, and the buildings on top of the metal all collapsed at the same time.

Corpses. This was a wasteland filled with dead people, as far as the eye could reach. There were fires, and screams, and endless crying.

This was the fourth day she was stuck under the debris, and her tummy was big and swollen. She had stopped crying because there were no more tears. She was thirsty. The concrete had made dents on her cheek and her beard was stuck. She’d ceased calling for help, and now just listened. She’d call again if she heard anyone, but no one was coming. Maybe they’d given up on searching for survivors.

 _Concentrate on my voice,_ said the scientist.

“Help,” Megara cried. “Please.”

 _Please,_ a hundred voices replied. _Please oh please, do not let me die._

“I’m so scared, I don’t want to die,” she sobbed.

 _Come, come, O come,_  the voices sang. _Do not let me die._

 _“Come, come, O come,”_ the girl sang. “ _Do not let me die._ “

 _Dying isn’t **that** bad,_ the scientist interjected. _Just as long as you don’t upload yourself to a computer, it isn’t._

She heard her own crying stop - perhaps out of curiosity. "Upload yourself to a computer?” she asked. “Really? How did you do that?”

 _Science, m'dear,_ he said, and she felt as if he was smiling. It made her smile, too.

By concentrating on his voice, the chanting of the other voices melted away.

“But why?”

_To help my son, of course. He needed my help._

“Who is your son?”

 _Sephiroth!_ all the voices thundered at once, and then again. _Sephiroth!_

_Sephiroth!_

_Sephiroth!_

_Sephiroth!_

The noise grew so loud that the girl put her hands over her ears. She pulled up her knees, and curled into a ball. She tried to block the chanting out, but it re-vibrated through her ears. It touched every cell in her body, as if her muscles were trembling. Her lips were dry, and her tiny existence was spun around that name.

_Sephiroth!_

_Sephiroth!_

_Come, come, O come, Glorious  
Do not let me die Noble_

_Come, come, O come, Glorious  
Do not let me die Noble_

_Sephiroth!  
Sephiroth!_

And she mouthed the name to herself. Her mouth wouldn’t work and her tongue was dry but when she prayed his name, all her fears vanished. It was _okay_ to be so angry she wanted to tear that creepy man’s face up. She wanted to destroy Shin-Ra. She wanted her family back. She wanted a new house, far, far away, and a new start. And wanting this was all okay. This was all **possible**.

She discovered why the drug was named Rejoy, because the bliss that flooded her system was nothing but joy. 

She laughed. She laughed herself awake, and someone put a gloved hand over her mouth. The world drizzled into existence. It felt like someone had pulled the curtains from her mind, and the room was now brightly lit. The only light was from the light bulb overhead, but everything seemed to bathe in a yellow glow anyway. She giggled.

“Her eyes are indeed red,” someone said.

The Moogle Girl, MG, looked at the Wutaian man that had spoken. His hand covered her mouth. She put her hands on his wrist, and pulled it down. “I really like this stuff,” she said. “Can I have more?”

“No,” he said.

“Why not,” she laughed, and she kept looking at his face with a drowsy smile on her lips. Funny, his eyes weren’t as creepy any more. They were just black. She wasn’t afraid any more. She was fearless.

She sat up straight, and looked at the gun on the table. If she grabbed it now, then she could press the barrel against the dot on his forehead and ram a bullet through his skull.

She reached for the gun.

He turned around, as if in slow-motion.

Her hands closed around it, and she put her finger on the trigger. She raised it, and put it against his head, an inch from the dot.

For a second the man looked surprised.

Admittedly, she was surprised, too.

“Shoot,” he whispered, his eyes locked on her.

Her eyes grew wide.

He frowned.

And then all the helpless rage in her body balled collected in her head. Her ears sang.

 _Do it,_  the scientist smirked.

She pulled the trigger.

And then the world sped up to a formidable pace. His fist hit the inside of her wrist while he ducked. He slammed the gun out of her hands, and pulled it from her limp fingers.

Suddenly she slammed onto floor. She tasted the carpet against her tongue. He stomped his foot was between her shoulder blades. He ground his heel into her spine. He said nothing. He put his gun away.

The courier looked at her with big, surprised eyes.

She struggled a little. She kicked her legs. She tried to push herself up. Then she lay still. Oddly enough, she wasn’t afraid any more.

The door opened. “Tseng? Is everything okay?”

MG looked up. Two-Guns stood there.

“She pulled a gun on me,” the Wutaian said. “She can’t be trusted.”

“Megara, really?” Two-Guns asked.  

Tseng sent him a look. “Take her away.” He lift his foot from MG’s back, and he sat down onto the bed. “You. Help me into the vest.”

“Payment first,” the courier demanded.

Two-Guns grabbed her arm, and pulled her to her feet as if she weighted nothing. Suddenly her feet were under her body, and MG could stand. He opened the door of her room, and started to drag her outside.

“This bag is full of materia,” Tseng said.

\- “Wait! My Moogle!”

Two-Gun’s face was hard, and he continued to pull her.

She put her feet side-by-side on the floor, and leaned backwards as far as she could. She pulled his thumb around her lower arm. His big hand could circle it almost completely. “Two-Guns, please. My Moogle!”

The Reaper looked back, and the shadows played with the scar on his cheek. Then he let go.

The sudden release caused her to stumble back into the room. Her hip hit the desk, and then she turned. She dove to the bed and reached out to grab her Moogle plush toy. With her other hand she grabbed three vials of Rejoy from the vest, pulling them out of their Velcro casing.

Two-Guns grabbed her by the Butterfly wings, and her yelp was louder than the ripping Velcro. He pulled her upright.

Her eyes were wide as she looked at Tseng. Her own brown hair was messy, and she didn’t have any balance. 

He stared back, and his black eyes were dead but not scary.

Two-Guns dragged her onto the hallway. She stumbled on her heels, then could walk again. Her heels did click-clack on the floor, and then they walked on the red carpet. She hid the vials behind Moogle’s head, and tugged his thumb again.

The Reaper dragged her through the hallway.

Struggling seemed futile. He was made of iron. The hair clung in her eyes. “Where are we going?”

He didn’t answer.

“Where are we going?” she asked again.  "Tell me, or I’ll scream and alarm all the customers.“

His face was ironed in a flat, steel expression. There were two downwards wrinkles at the corners of his mouth.

They took the back exit downstairs. It was discreetly hidden behind many commercial and advertisement boards, so customers of the Butterfly Inn could escape out of sight.

Two-Guns shoved her forward.

She stumbled. The night air was cold. She was just in a T-shirt and short skirt. She turned to look at him, and saw he was reaching for a gun, and then another one.

"Two-Guns…!”  she said, and her breath caught in her throat.

He clicked the safety pins from his guns - and she realized that’s why she hadn’t been able to shoot Tseng. _The safety caps!_

\- “I’m sorry, Moogle Girl.”

He was going to shoot her.

Without thinking, she threw a vial of Rejoy at him. He shot it first in reflex. The bullet hit the glass, and the vial broke. The green mako exploded with a bang.

The shock wave slammed them backwards. Two-Guns must’ve smashed against the wall. And she hoped he was okay. She herself was blown several meters backwards by the shock wave and then rolled over the floor. Her head hit the tiles twice, or three times. She wrapped her body around the vials and the Moogle. She caught a glimpse of a round sun of fire as big as a car where the two of them had been just moments ago.

She was lying on the street, the world was horizontal. She put her free hand beside her shoulder, and pushed herself up. She was dizzy, swayed. Her ears didn’t work - she couldn’t hear a thing, but she was sure everyone else must’ve heard it.

Her eyes caught a movement.

Two-Guns was getting up.

She took an unstable step backwards. On the place they’d been only moments before, was a big ring of black on the tiles. The advertisement signs that had hidden the back door of the Butterfly Inn had been blown against the ground. The light didn’t work. Some windows of the Inn were broken.

She turned. She ran.

Two-Guns aimed.

She ducked to the side. A few steps ahead of her on the street exploded a spark. She ran faster - as fast as she could.

The second bullet made a spark on the debris ahead of her.

She ran.

The explosion had stopped all electricity. The normally bright Butterfly Inn was now completely dark, and she ran into the even dark streets of the slums. This was her terrain.


	8. Chapter 8

MG, the Moogle Girl, ran away as fast as she could. The darkness of the Midgar slums swallowed her whole. The overhead Plate covered the sky from horizon to horizon like a big shoe that could stomp her flat any moment. There were no stars, no moon, no electricity that was still burning. What time was it? Twelve o'clock? One in the morning? It didn’t quite matter. In total darkness, time was a concept. It was either either dark or light, and that’s how her world was governed. Since it would be dark for quite some more time, it meant she would have opportunity to find a hiding place.

But it wasn’t that dark. Rather… it was kind of quite light. Lighter than she expected. The road ahead was dark and behind the ruins it was dark, but wherever she looked -as long as it was nearby- there was a glow on the floor that lit her path and she could see as well as if it were early dusk. Her feet thundered over the roads.

 _Two-Guns shot at me,_ Megara screamed in her mind. _Two-Guns shot at me!_

There was a small explosion to her left. Then one to her right.

_He did it again!_

She felt she was playing tag, and a hand was almost touching her back. An adrenaline rush warmed her ears. She was still deaf to all sounds - but her sight was enough to lead her away from the Butterfly Inn. She didn’t see more explosions in the sand, so perhaps Two-Guns had stopped shooting. If he was still firing shots, then he wasn’t hitting target. Maybe the explosion gave him a more thorough pounce than it gave her.

She was all over-thinking this while running, and then realized two things. One, she wasn’t getting tired of running. Two, she wasn’t afraid any more.

 _Hah! It appears the liquid had rewired your fight-or-flight mechanism,_  the scientist giggled. 

She’d never heard a grown man giggle before, and it sounded a bit unnerving. 

He continued with: _wonder how long you will last._

“Long enough,” she panted.

The only thing she felt was surprise from being shot at, and anger for being shot at. She wanted to fight, but not kill herself. This was a tactical retreat. She’ would get back at Two-Guns, one way or the other.

 _Fearless girl…_  he mused. 

“I’m just tired-” She jumped over a fallen chair. “Of being weak. I’ll get back at Two-Guns.”

He said no more. 

She ran onwards. In a funny way, she didn’t like being below-plate. When she looked up, with every step her vision moved up and down, and it looked like the plate was wobbling. It wouldn’t surprise her if another triangle-shaped sector would come down.

With Two-Guns chasing her, she’d better stay in the slums. She ran faster than him - especially with this crazy amount of stamina. What time was it? Two in the morning? Unless he had a motorcycle, he would’t be able to catch up with her. Cars didn’t go here. Too much debris.

She raced to one of the parts of Midgar that didn’t have the Plate as a roof: Sector 5 of the slums. As she climbed from the normal slum floor onto on top of the debris of the plate, she found that she could jump quite high. She could vertically jump a meter with ease, and two meters if she concentrated. She could pull herself up on just one arm, and balance without wavering. She was not even tired!

_This Rejoy stuff is amazing. I should get more._

But where could she get more?

_Tseng had looked at her: “Have you ever had Rejoy before?”  
_ _“No,” she had answered.  
_ _\- “Do you know of it?”  
_ _“Yes. But all I know is that it’s mako,” MG had said.  
_ _“It cures Geostigma survivors”_

Damn right it was curing her! It was giving her wings. She had not felt this happy, this powerful, in a long time. Even the pain in her back was gone. Carrying her young brother had been difficult. Physically, too. She wished she had Rejoy back in those days. Then carrying him around would’ve been much easier. But where could she get it?

She switched the Moogle toy to her other hand, and looked at the vials in her fist. Two red ones. The mako swirled under the glass as if it was something alive. With each of her steps it thundered against the glass. It looked angry. She pushed them with her thumb, and saw two stickers were pasted on them: Mako Reactor #2.

At the heart of Sector 5 stood a church. It was the only building in the entire sector that had remained moderately upright - probably because it had been just very lucky when a piece of the sector 5 plate had came down. A ray of hazy moonlight fell onto the church. The two upright towers pierced the moonlight and cast long shadows over the large steps that lead up to the double doors.

Megara’s pace slowed to a jog, and she looked over her shoulder. 

_No Two-Guns._

She hopped onto the white stairs of the church, and felt the light of the moon and the shadows of the building travel over her face. She looked up to the large construction. Last time she’d been here she had grabbed Denzel’s hand and ran towards the church. Now she felt like she ought to run away from it.

 _I suppose it would make a good hiding place,_ she thought.

The hard wooden door of the church opened with ease. She slipped inside, and quietly closed it behind her. There were a lot of wood splinters here. There was a big lake, and there were flowers. In the back there was a sword stuck in a big block of concrete.

“ _Hello_ ,” came a voice.

MG looked around. Everything in the church was black, except for the green water, which gave off an unhealthy eerie glow.  

“Come closer… I’m over here,” the voice said. “Hello, girl.”

“Oh, hello!” Now Mergara saw him.

At the back of the church stood a man in the moonlight. He almost didn’t stand out, because the black of his clothes mixed with the shadows, and his hair melted with the moonlight. He had his hands wrapped around the handle of a sword that was stuck in the concrete.

“Shhh!” he said. He put a finger on his lips. “My brother’s asleep.” Then he pointed to a black bundle in the corner of the church

“Sorry,” she whispered. She walked around the water to get to him. She approached slowly. “What are you doing?”

The man grimaced and pulled. “Trying to get this sword out. Uunn-fff. ”

\- “Why?”

“Because I want it,” he said.

\- “Why?”

“Nnnng-pfff. Because I like swords. I like big swords.”

\- “Why?”

\- “They make good weapons.” 

“Oh.” She looked at the sword and then at him. “It won’t look at big if you’re holding it. It would look big if I were holding it. Maybe _you_  should find a bigger one.”

“This is the biggest one I could find,” the stranger said. He wrapped his hands around the handle another time, and tried to pull once more.

\- “I know your face. You’re one of those people who promised to cure me from Geostigma.”

“And we did, didn’t we?” he said. Loz let go of the handle, and put his elbow on the pommel instead. He turned his attenion fully towards her. He had green eyes.

“What?” she asked.

\- “We cured you.”

She stared at him.

He lift one hand, as if gesturing helped him explain. “My brothers and I took care of you, we let you drink the black water. Then we got you back in time for my big brother appeared in Midgar. Sephiroth-”

“Sephiroth?” she asked.

Immediately the entire chorus of voices in her head called out: _Sephiroth!_  
And the scientist mumbled _Sephiroth, yes, yes,_  as if he was late for the choir.

“Yeah, Sephiroth. He’s our big brother. He’ll take care of us. He appeared. He summoned the black clouds in the sky-”

Her brown eyes grew big as saucers. “-and then the healing rain came!” she finished for him. “Sephiroth cured me? He cured me! It all makes perfect sense. Does anyone know this?”

Loz shrugged.

“I’ll tell them,” she said resolutely. Then she got a thoughts. “Hey, did you have Geostigma too? I know that red Rejoy helps. You should try it.”

Loz smirked. He turned around, and went back to pulling on the sword. He made the sounds.

Megara looked around. “I need to go to Mako Reactor #2…” she said. “Do you know a way?”

“Oof,” Loz sighed. He then pointed. “Do you see that man asleep in the corner? That’s my brother. Wake him up. He will help you!”

“Thanks.” She looked at him as he pulled again, and his face got little lines from the amount of power he used to try to get the sword out. She jumped down from the concrete altar, and walked around the pond to the side where the man slept. She stood by his head. There was a box at his foot-end that emitted a soft glow. She tip-toed around him, and knelt down in front of the box. She looked over her shoulder to Loz. He was still pulling on the sword. 

He didn’t notice a thing.

She carefully kept her eyes on the sleeping man, and held her breath. She opened the lock of the box, and then lift the lid up.

 _That was a_ lot _of materia._

She slipped two balls into the hand holding the vials and the Moogle. Then she looked at the men again, and picked another ball. He had so much, he wouldn’t miss any. Thus she slipped the third one into the hand holding the vials, and now she was holding so much she thought her fingers would slip and drop something if she took any more. She curled her arm around her Moogle, and hid the vials. She closed the lid.

A sudden feeling of discomfort overwhelmed her. Suddenly she felt all her strength leave her body, as if she was ill. The darkness settled in. It felt she was wearing sunglasses in the night. She looked around, but Loz was gone. She blinked. She rubbed her eyes. Her vision didn’t improve. The Rejoy had worn off.

She moved very carefully in the darkness, and then whispered. “Hey.”

The man mumbled.

“Hey,” she whispered, more insistently. “Wake up.”

The man tossed over, and pushed the blanket away from his chin. He had blonde hair in spikes, and she knew he was Cloud Strife. Two-Guns had said Cloud had beaten Aerith to death. He had also made Sephiroth disappear. He was on one line with Shin-Ra.

\- “Lemme sleep.”

“…” She reached out. She touched his shoulder.

Cloud jolted as if he’d received an electric shock. He cracked one blue eye open, and it glowed. The shine of it coloured her entire body blue. He looked at her. “How did you get in.”

“I need your help,” she said. “I need you to take me to Mako Reactor Two.”

\- “Why would I do that?”

“The man that was over there-” she pointed. “-pulling the big sword said you’d help.”

Cloud’s eyes followed her finger. He looked at the sword. Then he groaned, and sat up. He pressed his hand against his face. He rubbed his eyelids.

\- “Will you take me to Mako Reactor Two?”

He moaned softly.

“Please?”

He looked at her, then sat . “Okay.”

She stood up, and wobbled on one of her heels. She made a face. “Hey, may I have the shoes in that corner? These heels make my feet hurt.”

Cloud looked at her.

“I’m a slumkid,” she said.

He looked down again, and searched his pockets. He patted them with his hands. He took a long while to reply. Eventually he glanced at the lake, then the sword, then at the shoes, and then to her. “Fine. Put them on. We’re going.”


	9. Chapter 9

“Thank you for the-,” the Moogle Girl said. The low brown shoes looked unisex, but they were in her size, small, as if the woman that had worn them before her had tiny feet also. She stowed her feet in, and tied the laces. She looked up, but he was gone. “-hey!”

Cloud was already outside. He walked down the steps of the church. She hurried after him.

“Close the door,” he said with his low voice. She had never heard him raise his voice, as if everything he said ought to be kept secret.

She turned around on the top of the stairs, grabbed the handle of the church door and pulled. It didn’t give way. The wood was heavy! Were the hinges rusted? She put her feet on the floor and pulled harder. “Can’t-” she puffed. “It’s too heavy!”

He stopped walking.

He looked over his shoulder to her, and the moonlight painted one side of his face blue. His blue eyes stood out more. He looked at her for a moment longer, then slowly turned around. His black boots made tapping noises as he climbed the stairs. At the top, he waited.

She let go of the door handle.

He waited.

She stepped back, and wrapped her other arm over the tummy of her Moogle Plushie.

He stepped forward. He looked down at her as he grabbed the door handle. He seemed very tall. He pulled the church door close with seemingly no effort at all.

“How did you get in?”

“The door was open,” she lied.

He looked down on her as he turned. Then he walked down the steps, to his motorcycle. “…Maybe he opened it for you.”

“I don’t know,” she said. “Could be. He seemed kind of busy with his sword…” She walked after him, and suddenly it felt like she was again with one of her parents. It was so… strange to have an adult around. She looked at his gloved hand and thought of grabbing it. She’d slip her hands in his and hold his fingers. His hand would probably be able to wrap all around hers - it was so big. Then they arrived at the motor cycle, and moment was gone.

She felt kind of hollow. She should’ve taken his hand.

Cloud swung one leg over the motorcycle and sat down. MG climbed behind him. She didn’t know where to put her hands.

“Here. Around me.” He took her free hand’s wrist and pulled her arm forward. He lay it over his tummy. This pressed her body and cheek against his back. Oddly, she didn’t mind it. It was nice to have an adult around. She felt so small - almost like a child again. It was a rare feeling she had missed. It felt safe.

\- “Are you scared?”

\- “Just trembling.”

\- “No coat?" 

\- "Haven’t got one.”

“Ever been on a motor before?” It was as if he was trying to reassure her with his questions.

\- “No…”

“It’s just like riding a bicycle… only faster,” he said. As soon as he finished his sentence the engine of the vehikle roared. They drove off. It was a little strang at first, and a motorcycle did indeed go faster than a bicycle. But even if they swung from left to right, or go over bumps of debris, Cloud proved to be a reliable pillar to hold onto. She clenched him with one free hand, and the materia and vials and Moogle in the other hand.

The night was cold, and the wind cut over her bare skin like projectiles of ice needles wanted to wrap around her legs and throat and arms. She promised herself she would search for a coat sometime soon. A big warm one that’d stop wind and rain and sandstorms.

In the church, the man that had been tugging at the sword, called both Sephiroth and Cloud his ‘brother.’ Then were the three of them related? Was Cloud perhaps secretly Sephiroth’s younger brother? Then why had they fought?

She nuzzled her cheek in Cloud’s shirt.

If she’d still had family, she wouldn’t fight them. She would help them… like Cloud was helping her now.

He brought her all the way to Mako Reactor #2. The Reactor was a large building that was so big she couldn’t see the other side.

“You can stop now.”

“Maybe I shouldn’t have brought you here.” He said. “The radiation, and pollution… monsters. It’s not safe.”

“I’ll be fine,” she said. She sat up a little more. She couldn’t see anything scuttle about in the dark, so she would be alright. It wasn’t as dangerous as he thought. “Friends will pick me up.”

He made an U-turn. “I don’t think I believe you.”

“Well,” she replied with a big intake of air. Then she suddenly couldn’t think of anything to say. In horror she watched as Cloud made an U turn and went back the same route they’d come.

\- “Were are we going?”

\- “Back”

\- “I don’t want to go back. Someone’s after me. Stop driving.”

He continued to drive.

\- “Hey.”

He didn’t reply.

“Stop,” she said.  
“Drop me off,” she said. “ Are you even listening to me? This is kidnap!”

\- “I’m being responsible.”

She pushed one of her fingers into the small spaces between two of his ribs.

He sighed: “Don’t do that.”

She looked over her shoulder, and the reactor grew smaller. “As long as you keep driving I’ll keep annoying you. Stop and drop me off. We will both benefit from that, don’t you think?”

He continued to drive.

This wasn’t funny - they were going to wrong way! They were going too fast for her to simply jump off. What could she do?

She looked down on the Moogle in her hand. Then she uncurled two fingers. The vials. She brought the hand up to her mouth. She bit the lid off and unscrewed it. She drank the contents of one vial in five gulps. On its way to her tummy, it burned. The Rejoy immediately made her dizzy and motionless, but Cloud kept her in place. The same symptoms as before reared their heads, and the chorus of voices started. She didn’t want to get taken away by the stream.

 _Scientist Hojo,_ she asked the collection of voices in her mind. _Where are you?_

_I’m here, child. Concentrate on my voice._

_I’m glad you’re here._  She was starting to feel better. She regained control over her limbs. She could also see in the dark again. _What’s the best way to get off this motor?_  As she asked, she already knew the answer he was going to suggest, as if he was somehow in her mind.

_That’s Cloud Strife, huh? Cloud Strife… he was a specimen of mine once. Lifestream reacts with oxigen and evaporates. Unscrew the lid of the last vial._

She was already doing that. Letting go of Cloud while driving was scary, but she needed to move the vial to her other hand. The transition went fast. She gritted her teeth and put her hand around him again. That hand was now holding the last dose of precious Rejoy. She removed her finger from the place the lid had been, and shoved the Rejoy under Cloud’s nose.

The red liquid evaporated almost instantly in a big puff of red fumes, directly in his face. She heard him breathe in. The Rejoy curled around his head. It drifted in a long a horizontal chord over the road they’d taken. It was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen. The Rejoy was made of strings and dots, and every of them glittered. It was as if it winked at her. It looked so encouraging.

Cloud started to say something, but it became a mumble, and then incomprehensible. He stilled. The motorcycle slowed down. Suddenly he lost control of the vehicle. The front wheel hit a piece of debris. The wheel twisted to the side, but they still had their velocity. The vehicle sprang away to the right. They were catapulted to the left.

Falling actually went quite slow.

She had all the time in the world to take her vial-hand away from near Cloud’s face. She let go of the glass, and  by that time they were flying horizontally in the air over the street. She had all time to put one hand on the floor and make a cartwheel. She landed on her feet.

Cloud didn’t.

He landed in the debris. She couldn’t see him anymore, but above the place he’d landed was a tiny cloud of dust that curled into the sky.

She waited. She kind of wondered if she should check on him - if he had hit a spike, he could bleed to death, right? So she shuffled forward, glanced at him. He looked OK, just a bit dazed. His eyes had a green colour. He saw her, but didn’t register her.

She felt like she should ask something, like, are you ok?

He obviously wasn’t OK.

“Thanks.. for the ride?” she muttered instead. She lift her hand a little in a wave good-bye.

She then stepped back, and focused on the road. The pitch black night now seemed not as black any more. Everywhere she looked she could see even the smallest details in the concrete. The night was bustling with monsters, all of them were scuttling at the edge of her vision. Some with big eyes that looked like mirrors folded their tiny hands with three fingers as if they were preying and watched her from the dark. Others walked as she walked, stalking her parralel to the road. They dragged their tail and lance over the floor. Others chirped a warning sign to their flock and they all rose their yellow hedgehog spikes.

She was allowed to pass, as long as she stuck to the road.

 _Rejoy won’t last all night,_ Hojo reminded her.

She began to jog, and then to run, to the mako reactor. The monsters grew bigger with every street she took.

“I may need your help to get in,” she said.

_Hah! I thought you would never ask._

She ran to the mako reactor, eying the various creatures. “If the monsters outside already reach to my elbow, I don’t want to know what they look like at the inside. What is that smell?”

 _That smell,_  he said, and dropped a pause to make himself sound more important. _Is what you get if you try to breed a Unicorn Skyus Maximus with a Stravios Kerkes. It’s a Dualhorn. One horn wasn’t enough, you know? If you can have one, why not two?_

She looked at it. “It’s quite big.”

_Ooh, hey! Well, what do you know._

She frowned. “Do you recognize it?”

_This one is called Chris. He’s very friendly. Perfectly safe as long as you keep in front of him. Go to him, and he will burp all over you. You’ll smell for a week!_

“Why would I do that?”

_Because he’s the natural predator to the monsters indoors… and those are unfortunately a little less picky with their dish than Chris is. If you don’t want to get attacked and eaten, you tickle Chris’ chin and command him to burp._

She approached the mighty animal that was as big as a truck. She reached out, and couldn’t tickle his chin - she was too small for that. “Chris,” she commanded. “Burp.”

_Hold your breath._

The green cloud that suddenly surrounded her was one of the nastiest experiences she’d been through so far. The air was warm and damp. It her made her eyes prick. She didn’t breathe, but the sheer size of the cloud that surrounded her was reason enough for her not to start breathing.

_Very good, very good. You might not prove to be entirely useless. Walk away to the door of the reactor, and breathe out there. First you exhale, then you inhale. Exhale first. You don’t want this scent in your lungs._

She did as told, and when she was at the top of the stairs of the mako reactor, in front of the door, she finally exhaled. When she inhaled, the felt her tummy do a somersault. She dashed to the railing to throw up over it, but the scientist stopped her.

_Don’t throw up! You’ll lose the Rejoy in your stomach!_

The stench was terrible. She put a hand over her mouth and nose. Her stomach pushed the fluids up, but she kept her lps closed so tightly that it couldn’t go anywhere. She swallowed it down again.

_That’s my girl._

She didn’t know if she felt proud.

_Now let’s go inside, and see if we can enhance some other parts of your body than just your sense of smell and eyesight. Would you like to be a SOLDIER?“_

"Eh…” She pushed herself away from the railing.

 _Would you like to be powerful?_  Hojo asked.

She looked out over the debris that made up her world. “Yes,” she said to him. She turned, and put her hand on the door knob of the reactor.

_Excellent. Then let’s go inside, and do a little experiment. I’m very interested to how Red Lifestream and Jenova cells will mix with a female specimen. After all, Jenova is a woman._

“SOLDIER didn’t have girls?"she pushed the rusty brown metal door open. 

_Lack of research time, lack of research funds, the usual. Sephiroth was male, and we just used his formula as a base for thousands of others. I never got the chance to experiment with the female reaction to Jenova cells. Apart from one case…_

"How did that end up?”

“We got married,” he chuckled darkly.

The Moogle Girl stood at the threshold of the dark reactor. Her fingers curled over the edge. She looked into the hallway, and then took a step forward. The scientist Hojo laughed, but she didn’t know why.


	10. Chapter 10

“If I do this… will I really become a SOLDIER?” the girl with the moogle plushie asked the voice in her head. She stood at the threshold of the Midgar #2 mako reactor and looked at the dark hallway.

 _“Oh yes,”_ Hojo answered in her head. _“Walk on. I will guide you through the process.”_

“Can you do that?” 

_“I created the formula for SOLDIER. I personally oversaw experiments on hundreds of specimen, and when I perfected it, I was in charge of enhancing thousands of young kids like yourself. You are the perfect age to start mako treatments.“_

"That’s good, isn’t it?”

_“Yes, that’s good.”_

“But I will be only the second girl you’ll have experimented on…”

_“Hah! I am a scientist. I know, what I am doing.”_

Megara walked through the dark hallway that gave her the creeps. There was not a single light in front of her, and she had to navigate by the light coming from behind. But when the metal door to the outside world screamed and shut, she gave a little start, then only had her Rejoy eyesight to rely on. 

But how long would she be able to ride this Rejoy high? It was her last dose, and if she didn’t get through the reactor in time to find more mako, she would lose her see-in-the-dark ability… and probably her only chance on finding her way out. Ugh - This building felt like a maze. Up a staircase, down three hallways, down a staircase. 

She tried to memorize the route Hojo told her to take, but all corridors and ladders roughly looked the same. This entire building felt like one big coffin. Metal on both sides and overhead, caught all over again. She was caught in the Platefall, and she couldn' 

“HELP ME-” someone screamed. “My leg! My leg is off!”

The girl did a tiny jump and looked to the left into the darkness - then over her shoulder.

“My leg! A beam fell on my leg!”

That sounded an awful lot like someone had gotten crushed. Megara turned around. But who? She tilted her head to listen more intently. The crying it sounded like it was the girl that always hung up-side-and-down on the climbing frame.

“Megara you’re having a flashback.”

The girl with that shark T-shirt who was in her brother’s class. Oh no - if the girl’s leg was off, then what happened to her classmates, to-! Was everyone crushed?

“Xander!” she started to call. Her voice was loud against the walls of the coffin. She was locked up, the other buildings could crush the roof of the school any time. She was going to die - she and everyone in school was going to die and it wasn’t even 3:15 PM yet. She was going to die at school - what a stupid place to die. A cry caught in her throat and she choked it into her mouth. She had to call out. If she was still alive, maybe he was, too.

“Xander!” she yelled. “Xaaander! Moogle boy!”

“Megera!”

“Moogle!” She felt relief wash over her like a breeze of air on a summer day. He was alright, he was alive, she could just dig herself out of the rubble and go and find him. He was in the classroom across the hall. If she jumped over the railing-

 _“Megara, stop following the voices!”_ Hojo called again.

“Hojo, please be quiet! Moogle Boy’s here!” She held up one hand to shush him.

 _“You will call me Professor Hojo,”_ he said. _“I have titles, use them.”_

She looked around the dark classroom, over the shapes of her classmates that moved in the dark. They whispered things to her. “I’m sorry, Professor.”

_“That’s better. What time is it?”_

She looked at the clock on the wall. It had stopped at 1.36 in the afternoon, with both arrows hanging down as if the clock itself had deceased too. She had to find Moogle Boy-!

_“What, my dear, is the time?”_

She focused. “It’s-”

_“Is it time for Two-Guns to find you yet?”_

The image of Two-Guns popped into her mind, and the white-lipped determination on his face when he had raised his gun to shoot her. Her throat went dry and she felt ice cold in an instant. Oh no - he’s going to be so cross with me. “Is he here?”

_“Well, you tell me? You’re in a mako reactor. Is he here?”_

She looked around. The metal hanging bridge she was walking over seemed deserted. Both in front of her… she glanced over her shoulder, and behind her. She put one hand on her throat and felt that she was sweating. She was trembling, too. The buzzing of voices in her ears dimmed and suddenly she was hit by the deafening silence around her. The hum of the mako reactor was the only thing. Her footsteps had stopped. She’d even stopped breathing.

She buried her face in the plush toy. She fell to her knees, and sat down on her ankles. She curled around the toy. She pressed her nose and eyes and mouth into the head of Xander’s moogle. She didn’t breathe. Then her mouth suspended as if she was saying the letter E, and she choked on her tears. Then she was crying.

It was the only sound, her stupid crying. It echoed against the walls of the gigantic reactor that she couldn’t get out of. Every ricocheted back to her once or twice. She felt so weak for crying again. She had cried so often already it was stupid to cry again.

And she felt so alone.

So small and alone.

She felt the snot dripping out of her nose and she sat up, not wanting to make Xander’s moogle dirty with her snot. She pushed the back of her hand over her nose, and then the mouse of her thumb, and then her other hand. There was so much snot, so many tears.

 _“There, there,”_ Hojo said.

“I hate the world,” she croaked, and started crying again.

Hojo let her be for a minute longer. It was… actually kind of nice to have his voice in her mind, even if he didn’t say much. Surviving all this time in the slums was stupid. It were the survivors of Platefall and Geostigma that were unlucky. The lucky ones died, the rest just had to wait for it to be their turn. Now, she didn’t want to die, but she didn’t want to get up either. She wanted to just stop, stop everything. If she could freeze time and sit here forever, that would be ideal. No growing up, no having to get up, no people, no nothing. Just being here.

“I hate the world,” she repeated. “I hate it all, all of it.”

_“And where will that get you?”_

"Huh?”

_“Hating the world will not accomplish anything. Hate will only make you feel miserable, but won’t do a thing to change the rest of the world. Neither will wallowing in self-pity or sitting here. Wipe your cheeks.”_

She pressed her nose against the pompon of the moogle and snorted - drawing the snot all the way up into her nose and then swallowed it. She wiped her cheeks on her shoulders.

_“Get up.”_

She got up. 

Her left leg felt numb. In her legs was the zig-zag print of the floor: her skin had white and red lines. She rubbed her free hand over her skin, then took a first unsteady step. She didn’t really want to go on, but Professor Hojo was right.

 _“What do you want to do?”_  

"I want…Rejoy. I want to be stronger,” she walked forward now, one hand on the railing.

 _“That’s my girl,”_ Professor Hojo said it as if he was petting a puppy. _“Turn left. Are you feeling better?”_

“A little.”

 _“Concentrate on my voice,”_ Hojo said. _“While you walk, I’ll tell you more about the mako treatments. There’s a trick to it I found out myself - and the trick is in the amount and the frequency of the mako you’re subjected to. When the specimen-”_

"What’s a specimen?” 

"That means patient.  But if you were a patient, it would mean you’re ill. So you’re a specimen. Now… think of the planet and yourself as organisms.”

“What’s an organism?”

_“Didn’t they teach you anything at school?”_

“I just went to primary school. The last thing they taught me were equations. Then the plate fell.”

_“Then I shall from now on educate you. An organism is an being that’s alive, like you or a plant, or a monster.”_

“Like you?”

He laughed. _“I’m not alive. I simply am.”_

“Okay… organisms?”

_“You and the planet are both organisms. You have a stream inside you. For you, it’s the bloodstream. For the Planet, that is the Lifestream. The Lifestream of the world goes through underground vessels and channels. When s specimen is injected with mako energy, the bloodstream transports mako in the very same manner. The crux is that it should go to the heart - because the heart is the motor of the body. That’s why Sephiroth fought at the Heart of the Planet, because any effects be distributed to the furthest regions of the world - but that’s for later. I’m trailing off. Because you will not be injected with mako, oh look, we’ve arrived.”_

Megara put her head in her neck and looked up. “This is a five meter high metal door.”

_“Exactly. Well, make yourself useful.”_

“How?”

_“Punch it.”_

“Punch it?”

_“Yes”_

“Through this?”

_“Yes.”_

“You expect me to be able to punch through this gigantic metal door?”

_“Child, right now you are riding a mako high. Nothing is impossible. Aim for the area around the hinges or lock.”_

It seemed like a bad plan, but she walked to the left of the stone platform and stood in front of the door that was near the lock. She punched it, and immediately regretted it. A jolt of pain ran from her knuckles, through her arm, to the underside of her ear.

“Ow!“ She cradled her hand.

But there was a tiny dent in the door. Or was it a smudge from her knuckles? She leaned forward to look.

_"You call that a punch? Hah! Hahaha! That wasn’t even a push. Sephiroth would break through this door using only a single finger.”_

"Nobody can do that.”

_“Sephiroth could. He was a most amazing specimen. Ah, Sephiroth… my best work! But let’s not stall: punch again, but harder. As hard as you can. Ball your fingers into a fist and when  your knuckles hit the door, your arm should be a straight horizontal line from your knuckles to your shoulder. Put your weight in it.“_

She drew her sore hand back, and balled her fingers into a fist. She looked at the smudge and did everything the Professor said. She punched again and this time, she did it as hard as she could. Instantly her whole arm was on fire. Everything tinkled with an agonizing pain 

"Ow ow ow,” she said, and let out a long pained sound. “My hand hurts.”

_“Of course… of course it does. It appears you don’t have the SOLDIER body yet. I should have taken that into account.”_

“My hand hurts.”

_“I’m just so used to working with professionals, you know…?  I’m getting too old for this field work. I used to have an assistant to do this kind of odd jobs for me. Crim would be a better helper to you. Oh well! Forget about punching the hinges, or the punching wall to create a door. Making doors is for SOLDIERs. Let’s find a detour. There’s always a detour. These Midgar reactors were designed by Truesti after all.”_

“Then why did you let me punch that door?” she whined. She inspected her hand, and checked if all the fingers still worked. Everything hurt, but less then before. She turned back, and went up the tall metal stairs. Her feet sounded heavy on the steps.

 _“As I was saying-”_ The Professor said - completely ignoring her. “ _When injecting mako into a specimen, it should always follow the bloodstream to the heart. The heart is the motor of the body and pumps the used blood past the lungs. The lungs fill the blood with oxygen. From there on, the oxygen- and mako-filled blood course through all regions of the body. With even distribution, all parts of the body will benefit at the same time.”_

Megara turned left into the next coffin-like corridor. Everything seemed to get smaller and more suffocating. The Professor rambled on. He was a nice distraction.

 _“…injecting mako in the reverse direction of the bloodstream, -say, the blood leading towards the hand- would result in all that mako being collected by the hand itself. As a result, the hand will become mutated into grotesque shapes._  

"But if you do it the right way, then the mako streams towards the heart. Won’t the heart mutate?”

_“A little bit. The heart is the organ that gets saturated with mako energy first, but because it continues to pump, the mako doesn’t stay there long. The heart is very strong. The only thing that can change the heart is the mind, and even the mind can’t change it. ”_

She smiled a little at the romantic attitude of the man, and looked around where to go.

_“Treatment is most successful on an empty stomach. It’s no use to have the mako power the subject’s digestive system. Drinking Rejoy, therefore, is stupid. It wastes mako energy on consumption of meals. The most effective mako treatment is - go into that corridor.”_

She looked into a dark hallway, and from that hallway at least a dozen pairs of eyes stared back.

She froze.

Their eyes were yellow and metallic, like coins or mirrors that her little brother would use to shine the sunlight directly in her face. These creatures hunched in the shadows, however, and they had green faces. They looked more like lizards than like frogs, but had no tail. They were taller than she was, and had stakes made out of scrap iron.

“They’re looking at me.”

_“Frogoirs, finally! I thought we’d never find them. Excellent. That’s the right direction. You need to go into that hallway.”_

“I don’t like that idea.”

_“You don’t need to like my ideas - as long as you carry them out. Remember your little encounter with Chris? Walk. They will smell you.”_

“They have weapons!”

_“Hah! Chris would chew right through those toothpicks.” He made a humming sound as if he was scraping his throat. “Where was I again? Yes, yes… As I was saying,-”  
_

The man rambled on, and left her no room for discussion. She stood there. She wiped her wet cheek on the back of her hand and straightened up. She looked at the Frogoirs closest to her, and the idea of getting spiked appeared in her mind. They could jump her all at the same time, or stab her. But if they did - she’d rather have taken her chance and run for the mako reactor, than be standing here. She couldn’t stand here forever. She had to decide. Fight or stall?

She took cautious steps forward towards the creatures. They stayed where they were. She walked closer, and their golden coin-eyes took her in as if they gaughed her height and weight. She was small, and they were with many.

She was now a bed’s length away from the closest one, and they still weren’t moving. Maybe these creatures were enhanced by radiation, too. Maybe they weren’t afraid of Chris’ stench any more. She thought of turning back. Her throat constricted.

Three steps - this was the last moment she could turn away. She slowed down, and one of her feet lingered behind her - she wanted to take a step back. Then one of them let out a sound identical to like boiling water.

Suddenly all the creatures jumped, turned around, and ran.

 _“Case them!”_ Hojo ordered. _“They will lead you to the mako reactor!”_

She didn’t think - she just ran. Now their eyes weren’t on her any more, they were much harder to see. She ran, turned left, followed them through a long hallway. They made that bubbling noise again, this time louder. They hopped like panicked frogs. Sometimes the one furthest behind hopped the length of a car in a single jump.

She saw herself from a third-person perspective as she chased the Frogoirs through the labyrinth. She rushed forward and her feet thundered on the floor. She panted, and clenched the materia balls in her good hand and the moogle in her good arm. The other one still hurt.

She felt the Rejoy high wear off. It had been too long since she had taken her previous dose, and she was getting weaker. Soon she’d not be able to see any more.

At the end of the corridor, there was light. It was a pleasant red glow that illuminated a long strip from the door to Megara’s feet, and she slowed down to a jog. The frogoirs all jumped through the door into the area of light that was without a doubt, the Mako Reactor room Professor Hojo had been steering her towards.

She made a point of walking with both feet over the long chord of light like a ballet dancer, and then the light touched her skirt, then her chest and then her face. She arrived at the door, and she put a hand against the metal. She pushed it open all the way, and life and light flooded over her body as if she stood in the spotlight of a theatre.

She stood at a small balcony with a fire escape ladder to her left. She looked out over the gigantic room that was the Reactor itself. The entire floor looked like one big swimming pool of red mako plasma. It glowed bright, glittered, and winked at her. It trusted her. At least - that’s what it felt like.

In the middle of the pool was a long catwalk-bridge that lead to a platform with machines on it that had flicking alarm lights as if it were a disco. They jumped and pounded and screamed hello back at her, welcoming her to the reactor. Her welcoming committee of frogoirs was nowhere to be seen, but no doubt they were cheering her on from the shadows.   

Warmth and happiness filled her. She laughed. She laughed at first because she was relieved, and then because she was happy. She’d make it! Finally she had found this room! She’d not gotten lost, not gotten drawn away by the voices, didn’t give up, tried to punch a door, chased Frogoirs - she’d made it! All her own doing, with just a tiny bit of help from the Professor!

She’d never felt this accomplished. She breathed in and laughed. She put her moogle into the collar of her shirt so the big head stuck out, and then she climbed down the long stairs.   
  
She stood on the other side of the five-meters-high metal door, and gave it a friendly pat with her hand. “Sorry old boy,” she smiled. “No hard feelings, ok?”  
  
She spun on one foot on her tip-toes, and turned towards the long catwalk with the platform. While she walked, she pulled the Moogle from her shirt. This was the good part, so her Moogle ought to have the best view. She held its paw, and it dangled happily.  
  
She walked over the long metal bridge that lead to the machines. She’d barely done ten steps, when a loud click like a whip-crack cut through the tranquillity. The click sounded from behind her. She turned around, and saw in horror how big metal gears on either side of the mako reactor’s main door began to move. She wished they didn’t. She hoped they would break through old age. The gears pulled on metal chains. With long groans and loud protest, the gigantic door swung open like that of a vault. It was slow, and heavy.  
  
Footsteps. Someone moved, and walked to the new opening: a tall figure in a long black jacket appeared on the edge between the shadows of the previous room, and the brightness of this room. She couldn’t see his face at first, because he blended with the darkness.

But then the Reaper emerged from the darkness. There were scars on his face that she knew were old, but his torso and face had new burn wounds. His pink cut-up skin looked like minced meat. His voice, however, sounded rational and calm in a way that only a a very angry man can speak calmly. “Hello, little street rat.” 

Two-Guns gave her a smile. It missed all humanity. “I thought I would find you here.”


	11. Chapter 11

“I thought I would find you here.”  Two-Guns gave her a smile, but it missed all humanity. “Addicted to Rejoy already, huh?”  

Confronted with the sight of the Turk that was hunting her, Moogle Girl took a few steps away from him. He looked scary. He looked angry. Fear flooded her system. He was a grown-up, and she was still a child. He was stronger and smarter and much more powerful. He had friends. And she… she had _no one._ She had thought she’d had Two-Guns, but now she didn’t even have him. She felt so scared she could cry. Her fingers were cold even through the Mako reactor was warm.

She couldn’t breathe for a second.

“T-two Guns,” she stuttered. She clenched her hands around the Moogle plushie and brought it up to her chin like a barrier, but even that couldn’t stop her from seeing Two-Guns cracking a smile.

Blood from the injury on the side of his burned face tickled down from the corner of his smile to is chin. “Hello Megara.”

“I’m so sorry!” she blurted out.

“Oh well…” Two-Guns walked forward until he stood at the start of the P-shaped structure that hung above the lake of swirling red mako. The substance’s glow coloured the walls red. The ceiling was so high that it disappeared in darkness.

Two-Guns crossed his arms over his chest. He pulled out two blocky black guns from the holsters at his sides. “…I have come to collect you.”

No, no, no. She’d run so fast, there was no way he could have found her! She ran across half Midgar to the Church, and then spent the other half of the time riding on the back of Cloud’s motorcycle. It was no fair, no fair!

“How did you find me?”  

“I am a Turk from Shin-Ra. It’s what we do.”

“Shin-Ra?”

“Yeah, Shin-Ra. The big guys. The ones that built this reactor. And the city, and the world.” He fiddled with his guns. First the left one gave a dull click, then the right one. He didn’t look at her, but then again, why should he? She was standing at a modern version of a pirate ship’s plank. She couldn’t run anywhere.

She walked backwards to the machines, step by step. She didn’t want to stumble and fall into the mako.

 _That’s right. If you fall into the mako, you’re dead,_  Doctor Hojo warned in her mind.

She didn’t find much comfort in that thought. Everything was trying to hurt her. Even Two-Guns.  He was a grown-up, and she was still a child. Was he really going to shoot her? It was illegal to kill children! But he had shot at her before,

and back then he had aimed at her chest. If she hadn’t thrown the Rejoy at him, she would now be a corpse under the Butterfly Inn’s staircase.

Two-Guns shifted his weight onto his other leg. “Some days, I really hate my job,” he sighed. He raised one of his guns.

“Wait-!” She said. “I don’t understand.”

He lowered his gun, just a little. The mako around them tainted his black hair and black suit with a red glow. “Doesn’t matter.” He raised his gun again, aiming.

She felt so afraid she could throw up. “It does to me! If I’m going to die for it!” She hid her face behind her Moogle.

Two-Gun’s face hardened, and then softened. He lowered his guns, but kept his eyes on her. “…”

“Please!”

He sighed again. “I warned you, you know. When you worried about the rent, I told you, _don’t trust those ex-Turks too much. One never really leaves Shin-Ra._ But you didn’t connect the dots, did you?”

“You’re a Turk! You lied to me! I thought you hated Shin-Ra!”

“The Inn is a meeting place for all kinds of anti-ShinRa folk. The Company would be stupid not to have someone on the inside. I wanted to give you a better life, you know? All the rent you whores pay comes on a savings account, that is offered to you when you leave.”

She couldn’t believe her ears. Her mind raced.  Savings? Then who governed it? Don Cornelius? Now she thought of it, she had never actually seen the Don himself. The ones in charge were the old Butterfly woman for the girls and Two-Guns for security. But if Two-Guns was part of Shin-Ra… then Don Cornelius didn’t even exist. Then the Butterfly Inn was an establishment owned by Shinra.

Had she worked for Shin-Ra? Oh, she hated that thought! All she could muster up was: “I was not a whore!”

Two-Guns snickered. “No, you weren’t. Barely half the girls are sex workers. Most girls oversee transactions in Rejoy or materia or experimental elixirs.”

Moogle girl stared at him.

“You thought you were _special_?” he asked. “You arn’t. You’re just a girl. I offered you a good life, you know. You could have worked as a waitress and saved money. You could’ve bought yourself an education. I only chose you for the transaction because I thought you were small and smart. Clever enough to keep your mouth shut and stay put. The other girls were used to seeing Green Rejoy. If they’d seen the red stuff, they could have blabbered it to their customers.”

“So you chose me, because I didn’t know the first thing about it?”

“Exactly.” He looked at the swirling red mass below them.

She did, too. “Does it really cure Geostigma-survivors?”

“I don’t know.”

“Oh.”

“The Director wants to find out. Come with me, and we’ll go to Shin-Ra,” he said. _Or I’ll shot you,_ he meant, but he didn’t say that.

 _Ask him what they know of Rejoy,_ Hojo said.

“What do you know of Rejoy?” she repeated

“It’s new. It only popped up recently.”

 _Then the first thing Shin-Ra will want to know is what effects it has, and at what dose it’ll be deadly. Don’t go with him. They will experiment on you._  Hojo’s voice filled her with cold dread.

“Why does Shin-Ra want it? Is President Shinra ill? What’s with President Shinra?”

“Nothing.”

“Liar.” She said. And suddenly she was screaming. “You’re a stupid liar! Liar!”

The bullet came at her. She saw it only when it was only an arm’s length away, and it hung still in the air. She stared at it as it floated ever slow slowly. Her body reacted. It turned, and as soon as her feet clicked together, the bullet sped up again. It flew under her chin. It hissed as it passed her. Then it disappeared in the darkness of the reactor.

She looked at the darkness and then back at Two-Guns, but the next two bullets were in front of her already. She hadn’t even heard the blasts!

She ducked her head. She felt the hair on the left side of her head move, where the bullet had pushed through. The world sped up again, and she bolted. She ran in zig-zag pattern over the P-shaped metal bridge to the machines at the end. If it was sensitive equipment, then maybe she could take cover behind it. She didn’t know what else to do. She just didn’t want to get hit. 

He shot. She ran. Her feet thundered over the metal. The bullet was close, she ducked. She ran. He shot again.

She moved to the side, but she wasn’t fast enough. There suddenly was a soaring pain in her right arm, near her ribcage. She knew Two-Guns wasn’t messing around, and every shot could be deadly.

The machines were closer. She ran following the bend of the P, her foot slipped on the smooth metal. She lost her balance and a bullet hissed in the air in front of her where she should have been if she had still been standing. 

Instead, she was sliding over the metal on one hand and one hip.

She looked around, and saw Two-Guns’ face. He narrowed his grey eyes and aimed the barrel of both guns lower, right at her. He pulled the triggers.

The bullet went right through Moogle into her shoulder. The second bullet was a hand’s length in front of her, and she had to cross-eye to look at it. She moved her head. It felt like a hammer hit her skull when the bullet shot through the skin of her eyebrow, scraped the bone of her eye socket, and then few out at the other side of skin. It tugged her hair and was gone.

Moogle girl kicked her feet against the metal and slid over the platform. She saw Two-Guns’ surprised face, and then she slid behind the machines.

“What are you,” he asked. “- a SOLDIER?” His voice sounded far away. 

Megara heard the sound of boiling water, that sound was much closer. It was as if bubbles rose to the surface and them popped rapidly.

_Mako?_

She looked up. In front of her was a pair of big yellow eyes. And behind this Frogoir, was another one. And another. The whole family pack of green frogoirs had collected here behind the machines, and they all hunched down on their green hind legs as their front paws grabbed spears.

She was on the floor, and the nearest one was towering over her. It made the sound of boiling water bubbles again. Its eyes bulged. Its beak was broad, and when it opened to a slid, she saw he had teeth. There was a screw between them.

_These creatures can chew through metal!_

Mergara stared at it.

The frogoir stared back.

Two-Guns walked over the bridge to the machines, and every step of his feet made a sound: _clang, clang, clang._

Mergara felt a droplet tickle over her cheek. She didn’t move.

Two-Gun’s foot. _Clang._

She flinched.

The frogair let out a yelp. It jumped backwards. The entire family bolted. They raced to the other bend of the P. It rounded the corner, stumbling and jumping over each other like a wave of green that ate itself up in a hurry to move forward.

They bolted around the corner at Two-Guns. His guns barked like two mad dogs. The frogairs died instantly The ones that fell were immediately abandoned and overtaken. Other frogairs hopped over their limp bodies. Some dropped their spears. Three frogoirs threw their spears at Two-Guns - in vain. They were killed before they could aim properly, and their spears missed target.

Megara crawled behind the machines and wiped the droplet of her cheek. There now was a big red stain on her hands.

The guns suddenly stopped barking.

She peeked around the machine, and saw that the family of twenty-five were all dead. Two-Guns looked down on one of them, then turned on his heel and shot at her. His face was grim.

She ducked just in time. The bullet flew over her head.

She pressed her back against the machines. She looked at her arm. It throbbed, and it hurt, and the bullet had gone through her muscle. Her shoulder hurt, too. She didn’t feel a gap at her shoulder blade, so the bullet had to be still be in there. It was difficult to hold Moogle in that arm, and thus she switched the three balls of Materia and the plush toy to her other arm. She couldn’t stay seated here. Two-Guns could walk around the machines any moment.

He could either approach her from the side that had all the corpses of frogoirs…. or the side at which she had slipped.

When the plate had fallen, the Lifestream had picked up the corpses almost instantly. But nowadays the Lifestream was slow to turn bodies into glitter. It was most likely that Two-Guns would take the corner at which she’d slipped, that was easily accessible. Then she would have to clamber over the bodies, with her bad arm, and he could shoot her in the back.

 _Clang. Clang_ , he walked.

The only way to get out of this was to somehow get past him, to the long part of the bridge. If she could reach the solid platform and run through the big metal door she had punched, she could get away. But he would be shooting at her all the time, so while running, she would have to dodge his bullets. Could she do that?

She wanted to cry but she was too scared. She tried to be very quiet.

Maybe she could go to the Frogoirs and grab a spear and throw it at Two-Guns. But she had never thrown a spear before. Throwing a spear cost time… enough time for him to shoot her dead.

What could she do?!

The Materia in her good hand was useless, she didn’t even know how to use it.

The only thing she could do was go to the unblocked corner, try to ambush Two-Guns, run past him, and hope she could dodge his bullets. But if he could hit a vial of Rejoy in mid-air, he would have no problem shooting her!

And then, just as she moved to a crouch, a sudden weakness befell her. The effects of her last bottle of Rejoy left her system. She didn’t have her super powers any more, no ability to dodge bullets or jump high or inhuman speed. She clenched her jaws as she became a normal girl again.


	12. Chapter 12

Moogle Girl was trapped. She was weak and stupid and she didn’t want to die! Two-Guns could come acround the corner any moment now and shoot her dead. Without Red Mako in her body, she couldn’t dodge bullets.

She got up and scrambled to her feet as quietly as she could. With her head down, she tip-toed behind the machines to the bend where the family of dead frogoirs were piled up. Tiny green lizard-like bodies lay in piles next to big ones. Some had smooth skin, others were wrinkly. It really had been one family. 

_Why is the Lifestream not picking them up?_

She tried to avoid stepping on the bodies, but there were so many. She eventually had to stepped on one of their back, and she could feel the bones crack under her brown shoes. They weren’t fat creatures. Maybe if she survived this, she should drag one frogoir out to the DuelHorn Chris outside, and feed it to him. It was a waste to let the body rot here.

If Lifestream picked up corpses after creatures died, then how were people able to eat meat? Maybe it meant that the animals that were killed were being taken apart alive with mako, and only killed after the most important parts were taken out. What a sad thought. If she survived this, she would become a vegetarian.

It was stupid to think of this, stupid to decide while she was creeping over dead bodies.

She approached the corner of the machines, and pressed her shoulder against a square computer. It was big enough to crouch behind. She didn’t dare to make a noise. She didn’t know what to do. Her best guess was to run, right? Run for the door and hope he was out of bullets.

Her heart beat in her throat. _Please, oh please, I don’t want to die!_

Leaning in to glance around the corner was the most terrifying thing she had ever told herself to do. But if she put her bad hand on the floor, she could lean in a little. She put her nose near the edge. She swallowed. She glanced around the corner.  

And she looked right into the dark barrel of a gun.

“I thought you would choose this side to hide behind.” Two-Guns had his feet spread apart, over the muscled leg of a frogair. He was standing in front of her, and blood dripped from his face over his neck, it had stained his shirt. A big patch of red covered one side of his suit, as if someone had squeezed a watermelon over him. The skin was raw like minced meat, and pulled as he grimaced.

She wined like a dog. 

She duck her head between her shoulders. She couldn’t think, only look at the barrel that would deliver the final bullet. She thought that she ought to be proud of herself. She had made it far - all the way into the reactor itself. She was on the platform above a lake of mako that she could have turned into Rejoy. She’d been so close to actually becoming someone.  Someone… _else_. Someone who was _not_ a child or poor or weak. For a little while she’d been a butterfly-waitress and for a while she’d been rich and for a while she had been strong. That was definitely something to be proud of, right? 

She hadn’t found a family… but was it better to die alone or with a family? All these poor frogairs that hadn’t done anything wrong had died together, and maybe when the lifestream picked them up it would pick her up, too. Then she could belong to them. And she could be with her parents, with brother, and… 

_Is dying really that bad?_

She wanted to live. She couldn’t slap the gun out of his hand: then he would just shoot her with his other gun.  

“Sorry, moogle girl,” said the Reaper. He pressed the barrel of the gun against her forehead. She could feel the circle of the tube make a dent in her skin.

She squeezed her eyes shut. She started praying. _Please oh please, do not let me die!_

She prayed to the only god she knew. She dropped her materia to grab her moogle plusie with both hands. She put the big head with the pompom under her chin. Her eyes got blurry with blood and tears. Everything hurt. She pressed her mouth on the moogle’s fur and held it, kneeling.

_Glorious, generous Sephiroth!_

The three Materia balls rolled over the floor. One touched her knee, one rolled against the computer, and the last one disappeared over the edge of the platform.

“We from Shin-Ra do what’s best for the Planet. But we can’t save everyone. Sorry.” He said. “Sorry.”

_I hate Shin-Ra! I hate the world!  You saved me from geostigma! Save me once more!_

The frogairs disappeared one by one. They became translucent, and formed swirls of red Lifestream. The pink swirls reached to the darkness around them, to the ceiling, to the mako.

_Glorious, generous Sephiroth… Please oh please, do not let me die!_

The Red Lifestream formed a cloud around them. She heard Two-Guns hold his breath because he didn’t want to breathe in the red fumes. But MG opened her mouth and drew a deep breath of Rejoy. 

_Sephiroth?_

She opened her eyes and looked up. “Attack!”

With that single word, the red Rejoy in her lungs connected to the pink Lifestream in the air, which linked to the sea of mako below. The tiny ball of  Materia that had dropped into the lake,  heard her command. Its response was fuelled by the mako energy in the reactor - and that lake of mako went all the way into the core of the Planet.

Pillars of fire surged up from the surface of the mako lake. They grew as high as houses, and went up all the way to the ceiling. The circular pillars were surrounded by yellow tongues, which in their turn, grew into new pillars again. The inferno pushed over the edge of the platform and burned Two-Guns’s body from the waist up. His elbows were on fire, his suit, his face, his hair.

MG was on the floor at the computer. The flames hadn’t burnt her because she had been away from the edge in a crouch.

And as sudden as the pillars of fire had surged into the air, they stopped. In a heartbeat the lake was as flat and shimmery and tranquil as a moment ago.

The fire was gone, apart from the flames on Two-Guns. He screamed. He screamed again, and dropped his guns. He took off his jacket and dropped it on the floor. He tried to pat his face, and screamed more. The screaming filled the reactor.

She got up. She didn’t think about what she was doing. She just did. She dropped Moogle. She took two steps forward to him. While he screamed more, she put a hand on his hip. She gave him a little push.

His right heel curled over the edge of the platform, and he took another step back with his left foot. Only there was no platform, and he fell backwards.

He gasped.

She watched as his body hit the mako. It swallowed him slowly, like quicksand. She stood at the edge, and couldn’t do anything but stare. Then the screaming stopped.

She opened her mouth to breathe, but she couldn’t get any air. All oxygen had gone from the room. She opened her mouth again, and couldn’t breathe. Her lungs worked, but she couldn’t get any air! She put her hands on her throat. She had to go outside, and-

She swayed on her feet

outside-..!

She fell to her knees. The world swam diagonally, then horizontally, and then diagonally again. Her head hit the platform. She squeezed her teary eyes shut. She stared at a gun and, behind the weapon, lay Moogle.

She reached out.

Her fingers curled around Moogle and she drew it to her chest. Her lips pressed against the soft fabric. Then the world faded to black.

* * *

Someone sighed.   
Someone sighed again.   
Moogle girl felt that her bum and shoulders were hard and cold. Was she laying down? Yeah, she was. Then she breathed out. It sounded like a sigh - she was making these sounds herself.

She squeezed her eyes shut, and then opened then to slits. The world was bright. She closed them again, then blinked until she could open them further.

Far-away, Chris the Dualhorn burped. She was in the slums, at the foot of the mako reactor stairs. Next to her was a metal ton, and in the far distance, the skylight in place of the fallen plate illuminated the rest of Underground Midgar. It looked like dawn.

“Ugh….”

She tried to lift her arm, but it strung. She raised her other hand to her head, and ran her fingers over her face. She pinched the bridge of her nose. She felt the crusts of blood on her eyebrow. She took a deep breath in, and slowly exhaled.

She sat up.

No sign of people. 

“Professor?” she asked.

Professor Hojo’s voice, when it came, sounded far-away.  _Edge. Sector 4. Cheltentown, Victoria road, number 7, bring the barrel._

Then he was gone. She felt no power from Rejoy in her system. She was weak. Felt like crying. Everything hurt. She was hungry and she was tired. But she was alive.

 _Alive,_ she thought. She turned her head and looked around. The world seemed unchanged, and it was stupid and reassuring that it hadn’t changed. She had been through all that mess, and no one on the Planet had cared. Had she died, no one would have turned their head. 

_No one would have missed me._

She grabbed Moogle’s paw.

_But I’m alive._

She lived, and it was all thanks to Sephiroth. 

_I need to go on. Step by step._

She managed small steps. She pulled a black jacket tighter around her shoulders. She put the knee-high barrel on its side, and with a shove of her good hand, she rolled over the street.

_Oh no, it’s heavy. Does the Professor really expect me to roll this all the way to Edge? He’s nuts! I’m not going to take that stupid barrel!_

* * *

In the end, she kicked the stupid barrel onto an empty driveway. She rang the doorbell of a house. It was a narrow house with yellow walls and a big front door that she could lean her arm against. The golden plaque at the door read “WRO - veterinarian,” aside from the name of the owner.

There was a click of the doorbell system thing she didn’t know the name of. But it worked on electricity, because the voice from the speaker sounded distorted. “Who is it?”

“Me,” she said.

“Who is me?”

“Megara,” she said.

“I don’t open the door for anyone after seven. I don’t know any Megara.”

“Please, I need help.”

“I’m tired.”

“Well, I am too!” she said. “Constantly. Please.”

“Stand in front of the spyglass where I can see you,” the house owner said.

MG simply lift her bloodied plushie. “Look! Moogle is hurt and the doctor told me that you could fix him because you know surgery!”

There was a silence. For a moment she thought that he had rejected her and gone away, but then there were locks. The door opened to a slid, and the door tugged on another chain.

“Stupid door. This better be an emergency-” he mumbled, and then removed the last chain. The door swung open to reveal a tall wutaiian man with round glasses.

Moogle Girl swayed on her feet. She held out Moogle to him.

“That is a plush toy,” the man objected with a huff. And then he stared at her: “Oh dear, what happened to you?”

“I’m wounded.”

“I can see that. Anyone can see that. Bullet wounds? Who would shoot at a child?”

“Please, help me,” she said. “Please help me. Professor Hojo said you could. Professor Hojo said you’re the best.”


	13. Chapter 13

  
“Professor Hojo-?!” The wutaiian man first turned sheet white, and then his mouth dropped open a little bit. By reflex, he hunched a little more, and ducked his ears between his shoulders. “Did you just say… Professor Hojo said that?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Did the Professor send you?” he whisper-asked. He looked at her through his round glasses.

She nodded.

His eyebrows rose to his hairline, and then plummeted into a frown. He started closing the door, and it filled her with dread. He wasn’t going to leave her out here, was he? All alone? She was in trouble! She didn’t want to think of what happened before she woke up, but by now she was probably an enemy of Shin-Ra, and people would come for her. She wanted to be in a house, and be safe, and get help from an adult. She wasn’t an adult, she didn’t know how to act like a grown-up.

The door closed more, and panic jumped to her throat.

“I don’t want any trouble.” The guy looked at her as he retreated in the darkness. “Sorry kiddo.”

She quickly put one of her feet between the door and the frame.

“I’m a child!” she said. If he wanted to be quiet, she could be loud. “You can’t leave me out here! You can’t! I’m hurt! I’ll get Geostigma! I’ll die!”

“If you’re one of the Professor’s, you won’t die so easily,” he said.

“I- please!“  she said, and leaned on the foot that was keeping the door open. She pressed herself against it in order to look at his face better, and somehow convince him. "Please! I have no where else to go!”

The wutaiian man stopped.

“My parents are dead!” she said.

That usually did the trick.

“Come inside before the neighbours see you. Let me have a look at you.”

The door opened, and relief unwound all the tangles in her body. The strength left her. Her knee gave in, and she fell into his arms.

"Howdy.” He caught her tiny body. The man’s hands were cold and bony. “You look terrible, kiddo.”

“You look kinda pretty,” she said.

“I’m too old for you,” he said.

“That’s what everyone says,” she muttered.

“Hardly any kids around nowadays. In all of Edge, only a handful. You’ll get that comment a lot in the future. Watch out for older men who don’t think you’re too young for ’m. Lift your foot, I’ll help you get inside. What… what is that barrel doing on my doorstep?”

“He told me to bring it. Get it inside.” She grabbed his turtle-neck shirt with her good hand, and he pulled her inside. She sat down on the narrow staircase, and lay her head on one of the steps. The wood was cold and the ceiling had spider-webs without spiders on it. At her feet, there was the door. From the opened square the light radiated. He wheeled in the barrel, then sighed. He straightened up. He rubbed over his forehead with the back of his hand. stood before the door like an angel of white.

Then he closed the door. The light dimmed, and then only formed a rectangular border around the door.

“Moogle girl, I don’t want any trouble,” he said. “I don’t want to see the inside of a courtroom ever again, so after I fix you up, you’ll go on your merry way, OK?”

She didn’t know what to say, so she just said, “Ok.”

He gestures to the other side of the hallway, and he looked a little bit unsure. “The practise is at the back of the house. Can you get up on your own?”

“Practise?”

“I work for the WRO in the special animals department, because… because I’m should make myself useful… but in my spare time, I’m a vet.”

She groaned as she sat up, and wishes she would never have to move another inch. But the thought of painkillers and being fixed was more appealing than laying on this stairs for the rest of the day - though it was a close call.

Walking was a strain. They went to the back of the house, which looked more like a clinic than a living room. Everything was white, and the first thing the man did was put on a white coat.

She sat down on a white plastic chair, and looked around. Two light bulbs offered light overhead, but one of them flickered. On the wall were drawings of animals, sketches of pencil and ink. At the bottom of every corner was the artist’ name. Crim Sun. On the nearest table lay some sketches of medical rooms. Maps, details.

She tilted her head to see them better.

“Not for you,” Doctor Sun said. He paced to the table. He gathered the drawings dropped the stack with one side on the table to align all the pages horizontally, then vertically. He put them in an envelope addressed to Asreon Infusion Adult Games.Inc.

“What’s that for?” she asked.

“Not for little girls,” he repeated.

She shrugged and then winched.

He noticed.

She looked up to his face, and then away.

He put on green plastic gloves and went to her, and knelt down in front of her. “Let me have a look at that eye. Turn your head to me. Permission to touch you?”

“S-sure,” she said. She flinched slightly as his cold fingers touched her forehead. She looked at his face, and he had a really young face, but when he smiled it didn’t look like a smile but rather like he was saying the letter E but silent.

Their eyes locked.

She quickly glanced away. “You also need to take a look at my arm. And I think there’s a bullet still in my shoulder.”

“Ohgod,” he said.

That reassured her somewhat, because if he knew Sephiroth, Dr. Sun was on her side.

“Well, let’s take that jacket off then.” He gently helped her out of it, and then his fingers pinched the fabric. “Is… is that a Turk jacket?”

Two-Guns.

She’d murdered someone. Up till now, she had managed to put it out of her mind, but now the events of the previous evening rushed back at the speed of an incoming train. And when the guilt hit, it hit her hard. The vicious clarity of her memories showed her his burning body, and his screams began. They echoed in her ears like someone was turning the volume up and up, and she smelled smoke. Why was she wearing Two-Guns’s jacket?  

Why was she wearing the stupid jacket?

She yelped and suddenly couldn’t stand it any more. She couldn’t touch the jacket, didn’t want to wear it. She shrugged it off with sudden shaky and uncoordinated movements. Her arm caught in the sleeve and she shrieked. It hurt, but not with just pain. It felt like poison, she had killed a man!

The Reaper had come for her, but the girl he came to reap wasn’t there any more. But she was. She’d killed him. She had killed Two-Guns.

The jacket fell on the white tiles. It made a sound of fabric flopping, and dull metal clatter. From a fold, she saw a gun - why had she taken the gun?  Why was his gun in his jacket?

She felt her face burn with shame and tears, and tried to reply to Crim’s questioning look. And she couldn’t speak a word. She burst into tears.

He didn’t ask further.

She curled up on the chair, drawing her legs under her and crossing them. She held her pained arm.

He fixed her up. Eyebrow. Arm. Shoulder. He got the bullet out.

“…impractical equipment….” he muttered. “…. need a professional work environment. Where’s Heidi, where’s that lousy assistant when you need her? Shhh, shhh, it’s alright. I’m not angry with you. You’re going to be fine, you’re going to be beautiful again, just put your fringe over it. Stupid stitch thread…” And then he muttered. “…I need mako for this…”

“I’ve got mako,” she whispered back.

He paused. “Why didn’t you say so?”

“It’s in the barrel.”

He got up, shaking his head. He disappeared through the door and when he returned, he was slowly rolling the barrel. He placed it behind her. She couldn’t see what he was doing, and her shoulder muscles hurt too much to take the effort to look around. She closed her eyes, but when she did, all she could see was flames.

Her eyes snapped open and she told herself to stay awake. Look in front of her. Focus on the now. Focus on the drawing of the shirtless man riding a unicorn on the beach. He looked like the Wutaiian from the Butterfly Inn.

Her stomach knotted. Wrong memory.

Crim returned with a syringe filled with red mako, and he dabbed alcohol on cotton, then wiped it over the skin of her shoulder.

She looked at the other drawings. A big tiger-dog with a tail that was on fire. Fire. She didn’t want to see any fire. Next drawing. Dualhorn. Was that Chris? A signed photo of…. ?

She leaned in

Dr. Sun stabbed the syringe in next. The wonderful rush of mako -of Rejoy- flooded her senses. They shut off one by one, and then she couldn’t think of anything any more.

_Is that a signed photo of Sephiroth?_

_Sephiroth!_ , answered the chorus of Lifestream voices.

She smiled. She lay back on her chair, and relaxed with a sigh. Rejoy. Oh, what an appropriate name. The pain was ebbing away, and she thought she had never felt so happy. She was getting addicted to this stuff, and it wasn’t that bad. She loved it.

“Don’t follow the voices,” Dr. Sun said, and he was far away.

“I know,” she smiled.

“I’ll leave you here for a moment,”  Dr. Sun said. His knees made a noise like cracking as he got up. “Sit still, and hold your Moogle. I’m going to the next room, and make a quick call. I’ll be back to fix your Mister Mog.”

“Ok,” she said. She kept her eyes closed.

The vet’s footsteps sounded close, then further away. He closed the door to the clinic. He walked through the hallway. In another room, she heard him move. It took him several minutes… ages… for him to finally call, say his name.

MG drifted, and she hung in the chair.  Her head was tilted back as far as it would go, and her throat was long. It was unobstructed. She could finally breathe again, and she drank in deep breaths.

 _Glad you’re alright,_ a voice from the Lifestream said in her head.

_Two-Guns! You’re not mad?_

_No,_ he said. _But watch out._

And then he was gone.

Moogle girl opened her eyes, and saw a long time had passed. The long arrow of the clock pointed in the opposite direction, and Dr. Sun was nowhere. Her moogle lay stitched-up on her lap. It looked up at her through its eyes made of dashes.

She hear car doors slam outside.

She sat up.  _Car doors? That sound makes no sense._

Everyone walked in the city of Edge. Only the rich had cars, like oil bosses and businessmen and politicians. On her way here, there had been no car on the driveway. That could only mean one thing:

“Shin-Ra,” she hissed through her teeth. With the Rejoy in her blood, she didn’t feel scared any more.

She got off the chair, and picked up the jacket. She put it over her shoulders, despite her arm being in a sling. She couldn’t even feel the pain. She got up, and looked around the room. She pulled the photo of Sephiroth from the wall, and folded it up in squares. She stuck it in the breast pocket of her jacket.

Someone was at the back of the house, walking very quietly. There were people here - strangers! Dr. Sun had ratted them out!

“Doctor?” she called. She slipped her hand inside her jacket, and wrapped her fingers around Two-Guns’ gun. Her fingers glided over the cold metal, and she pulled out the gun. She checked the bullets. A few. Enough to shoot Doctor Crim Sun dead?

She slipped it back in the holster.

_Not now._

She looked around the room, and her eyes found the barrel. She saw Dr. Sun had put a little tap in the lid, and that tap could open or close. She screwed it open, and a tiny curl of red streamed out. She opened it up all the way. It was as red smoke poured out. The white room filled with threads of red Lifestream, and it hung against the ceiling like a live, moving cloud. Trains of red swirled around each other, hugged, parted. The entire room glittered and grew pink. The light bulb shone a brighter light, and the one that had flickered all the time, now stopped and emitted a healthy glow.

If Cloud Strife could get drunk on Rejoy, then so could anyone else.

“Doctor?” she asked. She put her shoulder against the wall. She didn’t even have to pretend the whine in her voice? “Doctor Sun?”

There was the sound of footsteps on the stairs. There was a noise at the front door. It opened. There was more than one person in the hallway, Moogle Girl knew that for sure. But even so, Dr. Sun was the one that came into the room. “Yes?”

She closed the door behind him. The Lifestream quivered.

“Oh no,” he said.

She breathed in the Lifestream and felt the friendly dizziness get a hold of her.

Dr. Sun went through his knees. He tried to grab hold of the table, but all his fingers got hold of was a roll of bandage and cissors. Those items fell to the ground, along with him.

“Doctor?” she asked.

He lay still.

She put a hand on the gun. Just in case.

There were footsteps on the hallways that grew closer. They were at the door.

“Well well,” the scientist sneered. He collected his legs under him in a kneel. He looked up to Moogle Girl, and then slowly rose to his feet. “You may prove yourself not to be a disappointment after all. I can’t believe you rolled that barrel of mako through two entire cities.”

He pushed his glasses up to his nose, and his blue eyes flashed dangerously.

“Professor!” Megara said, and she dashed to him.

“Ouf.”

She laughed and hugged him with her good arm. She pressed her nose in his turtleneck sweater and lab coat, and he smelled like washing dergent. “I missed you!”

“Let go of me,” Professor Hojo snapped, and shifted akwardly. He wasn’t pushing her off though.

She looked up to him and put her chin at his collarbone. “I’m looking for Sephiroth.”

“Not here,” he said.

She wanted to ask what he meant, but at that moment someone kicked the door so hard it burst out of one its hinges. It slammed open and was only held dionaginally upright by the remaining hinge at the bottom. It slammed against the wall. An intruder’s gloved hand stopped it.

Two men in black suits entered the room. The wore masks on their face.

She thought she recognized the Wutaiian man from the Inn. He had a dot between his eyebrows. Two-Guns had said he was the Director of the Turks.

“Tseng,” Hojo said, sounding pleased.

The Moogle Girl looked at Tseng.

“Knock them out,” Tseng said. His voice sounded weird because of the gasmask. He went to MG, and his fist lashed out.

She dodged, leaned back.

The other Turk hit Hojo on the side of his head. The scientist was instantly limp.

“No!” she screamt. “You can’t kill him! You can’t!”

“He’s just sleepin’ yo,” the Turk said.

She fought with Tseng. She dodges his punches. She kicked at him, but he grabbed her leg.

He pulled.

She wavered, lost her balance. She landed with her butt on the floor, and it hurt her tail-bone. She rolled and slammed her good fist in to his lip.

It knocked her head back.

Then someone -the other Turk!- put a bag over her head from behind. He pulled the chord.

She couldn’t see anything through the fabric - just some light. She threw punches and kicked, but two against one wasn’t fair.

They put a rope around the bag that she had to bite, and then she couldn’t talk but only bite it. Her screams sounded muffled. “This is kidnapping!” she tried to say, but it came out as only a muffled scream of nonsense words.

They pinned her down and tied her up, feet and knees and hands and elbows. They lift her up even though she struggled. They carried her out of the house. They threw her into the back of a car.

She fell on the back seat. The plastic seatbelt-locker that lay on the seat pricked in her thigh.

Two doors opened, and then closed. The engine of the car roared.

MG wiggled like a worm to get loose of her bounds, but they’d tied her up good. She eventually saw it was no use, and stopped. She lay in the darkness and looked at the cloth. Through the fabric she saw a thousand tiny squares of light, that became circles of light at how close they were to her eyes.

She lay and thought of Hojo. Would he be alright?

And what had the Professor meant with the words, “not here?”

Where was Sephiroth?  
Not here? What did that mean? Was Sephiroth not in the Lifestream? If Sephiroth wasn’t in the Red Lifestream, that could be the reason why Hojo was so prominently present in it. She had asked for Sephiroth again and again, but the Professor had come instead.

But if this theory was true, then it left one important question:

Where was Sephiroth then?

The car made a turn and MG rolled off the back seat, and into the gap between the seat and the two chairs at the front. She gritted her teeth. 

If she wanted to destroy Shin-Ra…

She ought to find him. 

And _bring him back._


	14. Chapter 14

“Brief me about the case,” Veld said, and shuffled into the elevator, dragging his bad leg behind him. 

Tseng glanced at him.

The doors slid closed. Only when they had shut completely, the other Turk began to talk:

“I… didn’t know who else to go to.”

“Of course you didn’t, I got a call from the President himself,” the old man said. “- And he asked me only`because you give yourself four hours a night. Come on, I’ll handle it.”

“I want to be there, too.” Tseng said. “Rufus-”

Veld huffed. “Don’t think in all negatives. The world isn’t black and white. Who’s our whistleblower?”

“Doctor Crim Sun, head of the WRO’s Department of New Science. Found the subject at his doorstep.”

“Background?”

“He was Hojo’s personal assistant. After Shin-Ra’s fall he went through numerous court cases, and showed enough remorse to sway the jury in his favour.”

Veld leaned put his metal arm on Tseng’s, and leaned on him for a moment as the elevator went up. “Let me guess - you had a little hand in convincing them?”

“Dr. Sun is one of the few people with the experience and the expertise of leading a Science Department. He doesn’t like the responsibility though. When he found the subject on his doorstep, he rang us at the old number, rather than the WRO.”

“Ah, so he wanted to avoid another court case.”

“And the subject I’ll interrogate?”

“She’s a little girl.”

Megara didn’t know how interrogations normally were conducted. She wondered if people always had to wait this long before being talked to.

She paced the square room with a table, two chairs, and a big mirror built into one wall. It was the biggest mirror she’d ever seen. After a few minutes she tired of pacing around (only figuratively, as she was functioning on a fresh dose of Rejoy) and stood still in front of the looking glass to inspect herself.

She brushed her fringe back to look at her eyebrow. Two-Gun’s bullet had gone through her skin on one side, scraped over her bone, and gone out the other side. Doctor Hojo had stitched it up nicely and with the bandages over her brow and eye, she kinda looked like a pirate. She looked cool. She wondered what her younger brother would’ve thought if he could’ve seen her. Xander would be so jealous of her pirate look! Though the sling and shoulder bandages was less pirate-like.

She sat down on one of the chairs that was bolted in the floor, and crossed her legs. A moment later the door opened and two men in black suits walked in. The timing was so perfect it made her feel as they’d been watching her, but there were no cameras in the corners of the room, and maybe it was just her imagination.

The two that came in, were men. One was old and shuffled, the other was less old and slammed the door closed.

She recognized him. That was Tseng, the man she’d seen in the Butterfly Inn. He had forced her at gunpoint to drink Rejoy.

“This is Commander Tseng of Shin-Ra,” the first man said. “I’m Veld Dragoon. I’m here to help you.”

Moogle girl got out of her chair a little bit as he shuffled to his own. She looked at him. “You’re a dragon?” she asked.

“No, Dragoon. Two o’s.”

“Ooh,” she said. Disappointed, she sat down on her chair. She could have used the help of a dragon.

Old man Veld went to the chair. He hung his bum above the seat, hoovered, and then flopped down on it with a little ‘oof.’ He leaned his shoulders against the back of the chair, and breathed out. His entire body sagged as if he deflated. “The chairs here are shit.”

“They’re the same as they were in your time,” Tseng answered. He remained standing next to the door, arms crossed, feet apart.

“Are they? I remember them being better.”

“Maybe they had cushions?” Moogle girl offered.

“Maybe,” Veld said. “Maybe… though I don’t think I’ve ever seen them having cushions. But let’s get to business. What is your name, little miss?”

They didn’t know her name? Maybe if they didn’t know who she was, then they didn’t know what had happened with Two-Guns. Maybe she could walk out of here. Maybe-…!

“Call me Moogle girl. Everyone does.”

“Your real name, please.”

“Why do you need it? So you can put it on a memorial stone?” She said. She crossed her arms. “No one will remember me.”

Veld looked at her. He crossed his arms too, and leaned forward over the table. “So your family’s gone, huh? When my daughter was roughly your age, I lost her. A few years ago, I found her back. Maybe we can find your parents-?”

“I watched them die,” she said. “In the flames of the Platefall. And that’s Shin-Ra’s fault. And my brother died of the Stigma.”

He said nothing.

“So you don’t need my name.”

“Your name is Megar-”

“How do you know?” She interrupted, gaping at him.

“Turks like him,” Veld said with a thumb pointing over his shoulder to Tseng, “know everything. What we don’t know, are things I hope you can tell me. I’m here to help.”

“You’re not going to kill me?”

“Shooting you isn’t going to make anyone’s day any prettier,” Veld said. He smiled with it, and it made her smile back.

At first it sounded good, until she realized he hadn’t said no. Then her smile disappeared.

“You were from a upper-middle class family. Your father worked at a local printing office and your mum worked at Shin-Ra as an archive manager. You went on holidays to Kalm and Junon. You liked to swim.”

“I also had a brother. He liked Moogles.”

“And did you have friends?”

“Yes, I had Silke and Rinari. There was Kelsey and Danielle-with-glasses. And Two-Guns. Oh!” She quickly put her hands over her mouth. She hadn’t meant to say that. Of course, it had been wrong not to say anything, but it wasn’t good to mention him in front of these people, either.

“Two-Guns, huh? That’s why we’re here.” Veld gestured to her clothes. “That’s his jacket you’re wearing, am I right?”

She pulled the jacket tighter around her body.

“And you had his gun on you,” Veld said. “We searched your pockets, and found his ID card.”

“And a empty package of gum,” she said befor he could forget it. “Sorry. I ate the gum.”

“You ate his chewing gum.”

“I was hungry.”

“Not any more? I could have someone prepare a meal for you.”

She shook her head. The Rejoy in her veins made her feel like she could pop any moment. When was the last time she’d eaten anything? Yesterday? Breakfast at the Butterfly Inn.

“Megara, I want you to tell us what happened after you left the Butterfly Inn,” he said.

She shook her head. She didn’t feel afraid, but telling them didn’t seem like a good idea.

“Please.”

She shook her head.

“We know you went to the Mako Reactor. How did you get there so fast?”

She kept her lips shut.

Tseng let out an audible sigh.

She looked up and their eyes met. His face was ghostly pale. “This is taking too long. Let me.”

Veld shook his head. “She’ll tell me. Megara, you probably stole a vehicle, right? A bicycle?”

She kept her mouth shut.

Tseng walked forward and took the old man’s place. His gloved hand dipped into his breast pocket and he smoothly pulled out a large flip phone with a big screen. He turned it to her, and showed her a video. She saw a miniature version of herself walking at the edge of the mako lake. A door opened and Two-Guns appeared. They talked, but there was no sound.

Her stomach contorted and she turned her head away. This was mean and she didn’t like it. She’d been there! She didn’t want to see it a second time! “I don’t want to see this.”

“Watch,” he ordered.

She reluctantly turned her eyes back, and saw the whole event a second time. But now, from various security cameras’ points of view. She saw herself run, saw the Frogoirs get shot, saw how she dropped the fire materia and the chain-reaction of mako fumes lit up the entire lake. The screen went pure white. When it returned to black-and-greys, she saw Two-Guns dance and scream but there was no sound.

“And here…” Tseng said. “You pushed him into the mako.”

“No I didn’t,” she said. “He fell.”

Tseng tapped his finger on the screen and moved the slider back. “You pushed him into the mako.”

“He fell.”

“You pushed him.”

“He fell! He fell, he fell, he fell!” And when he spoke again she repeated it three more times at the top of her lungs.

“Shush,” Tseng said and she shushed.

The next thing on the video was even stranger. She watched herself drop, from lack of air, and then she saw herself get up. But it was mechanical, and with jerks. it looked like she was a puppet on strings rather than a human being. She bumped her arm into the railing. She picked up the jacket Two-Guns had thrown off, and the materia, and the gun. Every step miniature-Megara did was shaky, and she walked away.

The view changed to another security camera at a different corridor, and she watched herself get a barrel, and at a machine, fill it with mako.

“How did you know Professor Hojo’s access codes?”

She stared at them.

They repeated the question.

“I… don’t exactly remember that,” she said. “I do know things from the moment I woke up at the foot of the stairs outside.”

Tseng glanced over his shoulder at Veld, but the old man didn’t give a sign. At least, not one she could see.

“Alright,” Tseng said. “Then tell me about the picture you have folded up in your pocket.”

Her hand immediately snapped to the coat pocket and the square pieced of folded paper.“

"Take it out.”

She guiltily took it out.

“Unfold it.”

She gingerly took two edges between her fingers, and unfolded it. It made a bit of a cracking noise, and there were wrinkles in the sheet, but the photo was still visible, as was the autograph of the most infamous SOLDIER at all time.

“Why do you have a picture of Sephiroth in your pocket?” Tseng asked. He reached out to take it.

She quickly pulled it to her chest, and flattened it by rubbing her hand over the wrinkle lines. She sent Veld a pleading look, but the old dragon didn’t seem intending to help her. She looked back on Tseng, and realized she was on her own, in a room in Shin-Ra that had metal plating on the walls, and was facing two adult men. Maybe Veld was a Turk, too. And they might shoot her afterwards.

“I-…” her stupid voice wouldn’t work and she hated it. “…it was already in Two-Gun’s pocket.”

“I find that hard to believe.”

“It’s true! It’s really true! This is the silver SOLDIER, right? The red one was always my mum’s favourite. He was so funny,” she said.

“Give me the picture, please.” Tseng said.

“Do you want to look at it, too?” she narrowed her eyes.

He nodded.

She looked at the photo of Sephiroth, and he looked gorgeous, with long silver hair and green eyes. His coat flapped in the wind that she could see but couldn’t feel. She wished she was with him, beside him. He would protect her from anything and everything. He had cured her from Geostigma, saved her from Two-Guns, she owed him big time. She wanted to find him, bring him back, and with this picture as reference, she could at least make sure that she found the real deal and not some stupid imposer.

She slid it over the table.

Tseng took it, folded it up and put it in the inside pocket of his coat without even looking at it.

“Hey!”

“Thank you.”

“That was mine!”

“It’s mine now,” Tseng said, and got up.

She stood up, too, and grabbed his arm. “That’s no fair!”

He shook his arm loose.

He walked to the position where Veld was standing. They nodded to each other, and both left the room.

“What do you think?” Tseng asked.

“I think we can absolve her from the guilt of killing Two-Guns. She’s a child, and her behaviour was… stressed. I think it’s a trauma she tries to surpress, or…”

“There is something fishy going on, and she doesn’t remember,” Tseng finished. “The shaky walking wasn’t normal. She reminded me of a puppet on strings, and she couldn’t have known those access codes.”

They looked through the mirror to the slumkid holding the picture of Sephiroth. She stared down at it, and ran her finger over the silver of his fair hair, following the flow.

Tseng tapped a hand on his coat pocket, and found it empty. His face hardened.

Veld put one hand on his hip, and stared at the girl too. “She’s one of the first people to have actually ingested Red Rejoy, am I correct?”

“Yes,” Tseng said. “For Rufus’ sake, let’s forward her to the Science Department and see how she gets on with the teatments. The barrel of Rejoy Elena obscured will provide us with enough Rejoy for a while that we won’t have to access the black market’s supply.”

“No considerations of worry for her fate?” Veld asked, softly.

Tseng looked at the ex-Turk, and said: “If there is something strange going on with the Planet, we can’t afford to ignore the early signs just to spare one life. And as soon as we offer her Rejoy, she will be a willing participant…”

When the men walked in again, the Dragon looked disappointed somehow.

She quickly stuck the paper in her coat pocket again so they wouldn’t see. She tried to look casual. She shifted on her chair and then wound a finger around a lock of her hair.

The old man sat down in front of her. This time he put his arm on the table, and it fell with a clang.

She stared at it. It was all metal.

“Sorry,” he apologised with a guilty smile that made the scar on his cheek curve. He tapped the fingers on the table. Tick, tick, tick, tick. “It just gets so heavy after a full day.”

“Can’t you screw it off?” she asked.

“First thing I’ll do what I get home,” Veld sighed. “I want to talk to you about what I think would be best…”

Moogle Girl looked at Tseng, and Veld followed her gaze.

“Director, please get me a cup of coffee. You’re intimidating the young lady.”

“I’m not afraid!”

Tseng shook his head, and turned his head. He left the room.

“Now…” Veld said. “Now comes the part that I’ll help you. Tell me what you want, and I’ll say if it’s possible.”

Sephiroth back.

She stood up, and put her hands on the table, looming over him. “I want more red Rejoy. I want my barrel back.” She felt like this was honestly her best shot. Without Rejoy, she was nothing. With this substance coursing through her veins, he was invincible.

He gave her a smile that she knew she should not trust, but the rest of his manner was nothing but friendly. “Shin-Ra can give you a limitless supply.”

“I hate Shin-Ra.”

“Then how about this? Instead of Shin-Ra, you will spend your time at the WRO department in the care of one of our world lead scientists. As long as you stay there, you’ll be properly fed and housed in the department. He will monitor the effects of the Rejoy on your body.”

She thought on it. The WRO and Shin-Ra were both bad, but maybe she could learn more about Sephiroth from the people that had opposed him. “I only want Dr. Sun.”

They shook hands on it. Veld’s metal hand pressed hard against her tiny one, so she squeezed back, and dented the metal. He didn’t notice, and she hid a grin.

The door opened, and they turned their heads to look.

Tseng had no coffee, but the Turk had brought Dr. Sun.

Dr. Sun had his hands folded behind his head, and the way he stood - not at all awkward but rather self assured- told her she was not the only one pumped with red mako: Hojo took a sip from his coffee mug.

Veld glanced down at the dent in his metal palm, and said nothing.


	15. Chapter 15

“Can you buy me something from the vending machine?” Moogle girl asked.

Tseng said. “No.”

“We can share?”

“No.”

“Boo.” 

Tseng took her o a different part of the building she was in. The halls changed from dark green to white, and instead of grim Turks - there was now hospital staff that walked around them. She’d been in the hospital before, to get her tonsils removed. After that, she had gotten a lot of icy pops. But that had been a long time ago. 

Megara wasn’t paying much attention to the staff that walked around them, or which corridors they turned into, or how the daylight changed to orange. Her thoughts repeated the interrogation conversation like the hand of a clock that has low batteries, and it can’t pull itself up any more past the number 9. She went over the conversation again and again. _Somehow_ -but how?- she had had gotten through the interrogation by the Turks and come out unscratched. Two-Guns was dead, and they didn’t even punish her.

As she was marveling over how lucky she was, how she wasn’t dead, how she had survived the difficult talk, she didn’t realize she was in for another interrogation.

“Turn left,” Tseng said. He walked one step behind her. It made her feel important, and she walked tall and proud. Nurses and patients moved aside for her. She was shadowed by a Turk. That made her important, right? She felt important.

And then she looked over her shoulder and saw that the spectators’ eyes weren’t on her, but on Tseng.

Her shoulders sagged and she folded her arms over her chest. Her mood plummeted, and when she realized she wasn’t holding anything, it plummeted even further. Where was Moogle? She missed her plush toy - was it still at Dr. Sun’s house? That person had been taken over by the soul of Professor Hojo. Maybe if she asked nicely, the Professor would give Moogle back to her. He _had_ to give the toy back. He was on her side, right? She had brought him back from the Red Lifestream onto the Planet. He _had_ to be civil to her. He totally owed her! Right?

“I hope the doctors here will be nicer than you are,” Megara said.

\- “Just because you’re a kid, doesn’t mean they will go easy on you.”

“Just because you’re a Turk, doesn’t mean I will go easy on you,” she parroted.

\- “What are you going to do?”

\- “Whatcha gonna do?”

“Stop repeating every thing I say,” Tseng said.

\- “Stop repeating every thing I say.”

\- “I’m a stupid little shit.”

\- “Wow you really are,” she said.

His face twisted. “Stop,” Tseng ordered.

She was very happy with herself, but the Turk, not so much.

“Stop walking, I meant,” Tseng said, and grabbed her by the neck. He pulled her back, and opened a white door. He steered her into a simple room with chairs lined at the walls. He let go.

The low coffee table in the middle of the room had a fake flower pot and magazines on it. None of those magazines were for people her age. Boring. On one of the covers, the President smiled.

Tseng put his hand on her shoulder and pushed her in further, “Wait in here. I want to have a I talk with Dr. Sun first.”

\- “Can’t I come?”

\- “No.”

Before she could launch a ‘but why not’, he closed the door behind her back. The Turk walked a few steps forward, and she opened the door again, but quietly.

He was walking through the hallway.

She looked at the other direction, then back at him.

He turned around, and waved his finger. Then he pointed back to to the door.

She made a face at him.

He kept looking.

She closed the door almost completely, and looked at him through the split. He didn’t walk away. She stepped back. She heard his footsteps. Yes, he was totally keeping an eye on this door. She could leave this room, even if she wanted to. Stupid Tseng.

She turned back to the table, and reached out to touch the flower in the pot. The leafs definitely felt plastic.

* * *

“Tell me about the interrogation?”

Tseng didn’t answer Rufus for a while. Then he said: “We let her go. No consequence.”

Rufus hummed, “Veld’s grown gentle in his old age.”

The wheels of Rufus’ wheelchair rolled quietly as Tseng pushed him, passing rows of doors. One was slightly ajar. Rufus’ eyes lingered on it, and he caught a glimpse of a girl with… a Turk jacket that was too big for her.

Rufus looked straight ahead, “Anything else to report?”  

Tseng’s hands tightened around the handles of the wheelchair, “I’ll brief you on our findings after the appointment. I’m going to have a word with Dr. Sun now.” And he wheeled Rufus into a corner.

“Hey.” Rufus said.

Tseng locked the wheelchair into place with the foot-break, “Let’s not have a repeat of last time.”

Rufus looked positively disgruntled.

Tseng sent him a look as he left,  “ _No_ walkies.” 

“Woof.” 

Rufus sighed, and deflated. He sank deeper into his wheelchair, and closed his eyes - only the good one was visible, the other one was hidden under a thick layer of bandages.

Tseng seemed to deem this behaviour moderately sufficient, and let go of the wheelchair. He turned, left Rufus. He went into the doctor’s office.

The white President of the unpopular Shin-Ra company remained seated in the chair for perhaps ten seconds longer. He listened. Then he moved.

The wheelchair had a magnetic walking stick attached to the frame, and Rufus pulled it out. It snapped together. He put the tip on the floor, and rocked himself forward. At the second try, he got up with an audible huff of air, as if he found himself very heavy to lift. He wasn’t as able as he used to be. Maybe this was what Veld felt like on a bad day?

He went, holding on to railings and the wall as he walked, into the waiting room where Moogle Girl was. 

* * *

When the door opened, Megara jolted on her chair. Her gaze snapped to the left, and she watched the figure in the doorway straighten up. He was tall and his hand trembled.

She straightened up too. She was definitely stronger than him. But what did he want? Did Tseng send him in? Who was he? Why was he approaching her?

She said nothing.

The stranger offered her a faint smile. “Hey.”

She didn’t reply.

“How’re you doing?”

He lowered himself onto a chair, but he seemed ready to drop on it. His chair was one, two seats removed from hers.  

“Are you ill, too?” she eventually asked.

The stranger smiled, and instead asked, “What are you in for?”

She chin rose, and looked at him. He came across as vaguely familiar. She tried to peek under his hood that obscured most of his face. He had an eye patch, like her.

She swung her legs above the floor. The toes of her brown boots dragged over the floor, and she lifted them so she could swing her feet properly. She said: “I’m waiting for someone to pick me up. Tseng. Or Dr. Sun.”

“How convenient, so am I.”

She shrugged. “Let’s wait together.”

He didn’t move. He looked ahead, both hands on the walking stick.

She put a hand on the chair between them. She leaned a little forward, in his direction.  
“Can you take off your hood?” she asked.

For someone who did so hard his best to look calm, he was hesitant: he looked at her, only his nose and lips visible, until he raised a hand to slide the hood back. The white fabric dropped onto his shoulders.

“You’re….” She stared, “You’re President Shinra.”

He didn’t react, he didn’t refuse the claim. He sat still as if he had endured this accusation a million times before. All he did was smile.

She didn’t like that smile. It looked genuine while it wasn’t.

He pulled his hood back up and seemed content to wait.

Megara’s feet stopped swinging. She curled her feet around the legs of the chair and leaned away from him, and couldn’t believe what she was seeing. The person in front of her was actually the President of Shinra. He was the man that caused the plate to drop, right? She forgot to breathe, and wasn’t sure what to do.

President **Shinra**.

She recognized him from the telly, when he had announced that Edge was being built, that everyone in Midgar ought to move to the west. She’d seen him in newspapers, talking about new water tanks, and about environment and green energy. Even the cover of the fashion magazine on the coffee table in front of her carried his face.

 **His** Turks had shot at, kidnapped, and tried to kill her.

She’d seen him on newspapers pictures, and on the health posters, and in news cartoons at page 2 of TheMidgarTimes. She hardly ever understood those, but sometimes they were funny. They made jokes about his hair, and about his white suit and tomato sauce. In person, he did wear white. The cartoonists got that right.

But he was the man that caused **Platefall** , and took her parents away.

Sephiroth cured her from the Stigma, but his company caused it. Her brother had died because of him, because of this President and-

“Did Tseng and Veld treat you well?” he asked.

A ripple traveled through her body, and she stopped her thoughts. “Huh?”

The clock in the corner of the room ticked loudly.

He repeated his words. He sounded patient.

Somehow that ticked her off even more. Why should he care how they treated her? This guy was, like, her worst enemy! He had killed her parents! He was her nemesis!

“You seem angry,” he commented, but that small, irritating smile remained.

She pressed her lips on each other until they were white.

“I,” she inhaled, “am _not_ angry!”

“With the way things are,” he leaned back, “It’s hard not to be angry, I suppose.”

Now she was fuming on the inside. She curled her hands around the edge of her seat until her knuckles were white. “What do you know about me, you don’t know what I went through!”

Under the hood, she saw his smile stretch, “I have a fair idea.”

“Ok,” she said - it was all she could manage that wasn’t a sneer. She gritted her teeth and stared ahead at the stupid plastic flower that was as fake as Shin-Ra’s green energy ideas, and as fake as Rufus Shinra and his stupid smiles. She didn’t believe a word he was saying. He was a poophead. And a liar.

“Ok,” she repeated.

She looked at that clock and wondered if it was already time for someone to pick her up.

“Do you have any friends?” he asked.

She glanced at him and then looked away.  

“Not any more,” she said. “I lost a friend yesterday. He was my only friend.”

Rufus inhaled slowly, “He was my friend, too. Take care of his jacket for me.”

She shrugged.  

Rufus didn’t say anything for a while, and neither did she. But then she sniffed and pushed her hand over her nose. There was a big smear of snot.   
She heard him move, and found that he was holding a handkerchief out to her.

“Just because you did something terrible, doesn’t make you a terrible person,” he said kindly.  

She took the handkerchief, and the white fabric felt smooth in her fingers. She pressed against her nose and her eyes. It was soft. There was a gold R in the corner. She folded it open to get a new part that wasn’t full of wetness, and saw a black smear.

“Making amends is the most important thing.” Rufus’ voice dropped to a whisper.

She didn’t know what amends were, and she didn’t know how to make them - she certainly didn’t want want to make them with President _Shinra_!

She folded the handkerchief so she couldn’t see the black smear. She dabbed her eyes. “Are you sick, too?”

“Nothing serious.”

She wasn’t sure if she believed him. She felt her fingertips go numb from grabbing the seat so hard, so she let go, and flexed them.

President Shinra was looking at her hands too, so she hid them under her thighs.

He looked straight ahead, wrapping his hands over his cane. A bandage was wrapped around his hand-palm, and that caught her eye. She pointed.

“You have the Stigma?”

“…” The bandaged hand grabbed the cane tighter and immediately let go.

“I thought the rain healed everyone important?”

“It seems not everyone is worthy,” he said.

She thought Sephiroth had saved everyone important. She didn’t like him, but she thought Rufus must have been important too. But if Sephiroth didn’t save the important people, then what criteria did he handle? How did he select the people that he would save, and which he didn’t?

He’d saved a lot of children who were nobodies like her, the outcasts, the forgotten. Maybe he only saved the innocent. Or maybe he only saved people who hated the world.

Was there a big group of people who hated the Planet? Maybe there were. Maybe she could find them, and they’d help her fight Rufus. If she could give Rejoy to them, then they would heal from the Stigma.

But Rufus… She didn’t like him, but maybe she should tell him that Rejoy could make him better? That Sephiroth could still save him? That could maybe make him a better person?

“Do you hate the world?” she asked. “Or me? Or yourself?”

His head rose high enough for her to see his eye. He studied her a moment, and she wondered if she should’ve asked such questions.

His lips were a thin line, “Hate is a waste of time. Take it from experience.”

What did he mean? What experience? Who or what did he hate? His answer confused her. She looked him up an down again, and wondered if he was more hurt than he was letting on.

She shifted on her seat, and put her hands in the pockets of her jacket, to hide them. In the pockets she wrapped her hands around the empty package of chewing gum, the folded picture of Sephiroth, and some loose bullets.

She wondered where the gun was the red headed Turk had taken it from her upon capture. Would he give Two-Guns gun’ back to her? Probably not. But then again, she didn’t need a gun. As long as she had Rejoy, she could do anything! She could dodge bullets, jump super high, and she was probably stronger than most people, too. She wondered if she was stronger than Tseng. Probably not. He had kidnapped her after all. But if Rufus had the Stigma, she was definitely stronger than him!

She glanced at him.

And for a split second, she felt so super strong that it was scary. She could punch him. She could probably kill him. End his life, if she really really wanted to.

Did she want to?

She **could**.

Did she want to end President Shinra’s life?

The next moment that realization passed, and faded. In its stead, shock and horror settled in. How could she think such a thing! That wasn’t nice, and she didn’t want to kill anyone else! Two-Guns… he’d been an accident. He had tripped and fallen. It wasn’t her fault, but if she’d get up and attack the President, then that would be a bad thing to do. No, she didn’t want to kill him, despite them being arch enemies!

If he didn’t get better - he’d die, and it wouldn’t be her fault. Just like Two-Gun’s death wasn’t her fault. She hadn’t killed him: Sephiroth had, and by doing that, he’d saved her. She really owed Sephiroth. She’d find him and bring him back-

Rufus suddenly gripped his cane, his knuckles white, and lowered his head so his face was hidden again.

The President was having a seizure! She’d seen -and felt- enough of them to know how much that hurt, and yet this seizure was different. Why was Rufus not crying, or shaking? Why was he not making noise like a normal person would? Spasms did go through his body: she could see his clothes wrinkle, but he didn’t move. Was he on medication?

Rufus grabbed his right arm with his left hand.

For a second she thought he was going to fall. By reflex, she reached out to stop him from falling. But he didn’t fall at all. He remained upright, stiff.

And as she held his arm, the spasms ebbed away. Two, three more shakes, and then they stopped completely.

They sat still.

Then Rufus exhaled slowly - a long sigh that seemed to come from the tip of his toes.

She gently rubbed his arm. The fabric was surprisingly soft under her hand, as if he was wearing pyjamas all the time.

“Are…” She swallowed.

Rufus was stiff. Didn’t react.

“Are you alright?” She asked. And after a moment: “Mr. President?”

Rufus straightened, and inhaled. He smirked a little at nothing. He lift his hand, and dipped it under the hood, pushing it up a little. He ran a finger under the bandage over his other eye. His pupil was green and split like Yazoo’s.

MG stared.

He pulled his finger back, and there was a smudge of back ooze covering the tip.

Tseng opened the door.

The ooze on the finger became a wisp of red Lifestream.

Both of them looked up at Tseng: Megara pulled her hand back, and Rufus shook a little.

Tseng’s expression was akin to a dried up raisin. Wrinkled, and all the fun sucked out of him. Maybe that’s why she turned to Tseng and cheerily said:

“Look! We’re both pirates!”

Rufus grinned.

Tseng pushed forth a big wheelchair.

“Ah, Tseng, I was getting to know our new resident.”

“Dr. Sun can see you now,” was all Tseng said.

Rufus pushed himself to the edge of the seat. He rocked forth once, and sat down again. He hummed in amusement.  

Megara jumped off his seat to help him get up, and Tseng dashed forward also.

She took his arm, and suddenly Rufus got up without effort. He stood fast and fluidly.

Tseng paused in surprise.

Moogle girl noticed their pause, and she quickly let go of Rufus. He immediately hunched his shoulders, and wavered. Tseng grabbed him this time, and lead him one more step to the wheelchair.

Just as he stepped near the wheelchair, he turned around and reached out.   
Tseng let him, and helped him remain upright.   
The President stuck out a hand to her, “Thank you for the help.”

She looked at his hand, and then took it. Shaking hands with grownups always felt strange. His hand was like a plastic sandwich bag filled with tiny bones, so thin.

Then suddenly his grip strengthened. “No doubt we’ll meet again, Megara.”

She let go again. She wiped her hand on her skirt. She didn’t know if she wanted to see him again - she hoped they wouldn’t.

Rufus sat down in the chair and hung his walking stick on the handle.

Tseng kneeled down, and grabbed Rufus’ ankle. He put the left leg onto the footrest, and Rufus insistently set his right leg on it by himself.  

Tseng turned the wheelchair, and pushed Rufus out of the room.

The door fell close behind them, but Megara got up. She opened the door and looked through the slid to see them go through the corridor. She watched Tseng wheel him away.

When they were out of earshot, Rufus could sense the Turk’s mood from the way he gripped the handlebars.

“Can you not stay put for once?“ Tseng said.

Rufus smirked. "I was doing a little research of my own. I found out something rather interesting.”  

\- “I really wish you wouldn’t do that.”


	16. Chapter 16

What was taking Professor Hojo so long?

Megara peeked through the slit between the door and the frame, and watched the corridor where she had seen the president of Shin-Ra and Tseng disappear. There was a hospital bed on the hallway, and two folded plastic chairs leaned agains the opposite wall. And beside that… a vending machine.

She sucked air in, and held her breath.

A vending machine - a big square of promise. It was as tall as a grown man and it looked like a skyscraper decorated with December lights. The sides were covered in stickers, showing off SMILIE COOKIE™  and white chocolate with rice crispies. She’d never had white chocolate with rice crispies, but now she had to taste it. Chocolate and rice and crispy sounded amazing.  The rainbowcolour lights flickered, and then she heard the sound. It hummed softly. It hummed to her, like a…

_Bzzzzmmmmmmmm…. bzzzmmmmm I have to tell you a secret bzzmmmmmm…_

She breathed out, and bit her lip. She really, really wanted to a rice crispy chocolate. Or a SmilieCookie, or something else that was in there. She started to push the door open a little bit…

* * *

 

But Tseng had told her not to leave the waiting room.

Megara stopped, with one hand on the door knob. She looked over her shoulder to the boring waiting room, and then to the corridor he had disappeared in.

Tseng… Tseng was stupid. And mean. And it wasn’t so far to the machine. If he would come around to pick her up again, then she could dash back from the machine to the waiting room before he saw her. She just had to be quick about it.

_… Megara come closer bzzmmmmm…_

She stuck her head around the door, and looked both ways.

No - if he appeared, she shouldn’t run. If she was going to fight against Shin-Ra, then she shouldn’t be afraid! Sephiroth wouldn’t be afraid, he would go to the vending machine too! And he would be rich and buy all the yummies.

And Professor Hojo wouldn’t mind. He would understand.

_…Bzzmmmmm chewing gum… candy barzzzzz…_

She looked in both directions again, and then left the waiting room. She slipped out, and tip-toed to the machine.

Chewing gum! Crunchie bars. Caramel camels. Cookies, chocolate, crisps. They even had dark chocolate cupcake - with brown crust in the shape of clouds that threatened to roll over the edge of the greasy paper wrapper, and on top of the cake were chunks of dark chocolate as big as dice.

She touched the glass of the vending machine with her nose and stared. The glass was cold against her nose and hands.

In the hallway, a door opened.

Megara jolted and looked in both sides where the noise had come from - and she saw a woman in a suit walk towards her. Suit. Turk.

_I didn’t know girls could be Turks, too?_

Megara felt her throat tighten and she wanted to run away. No more Turks, no more fighting, no more- no, she should stand here. She said she wouldn’t run away from anyone Shin-Ra again!

The lady walked closer, and ran a hand through her red hair. She looked scary. But the face… the face was someone Megara recognized.

“Brothel madam?” she asked. “Cissnei?”

“Hello Moogle girl,” the lady said, and approached until they were standing side-by-side.

Megara stared. The face was all correct, but the suit wasn’t. The suit was evil and it made Cissnei scary. But this was the woman that had washed Megara’s hair the day Two-Guns had brought her into the Butterfly inn, and Cissnei had been the one to pay the residence/food fee to, and Cissnei had given her moogle-coloured butterfly wings.   
“Why are you wearing a suit?”

“Do you really need to ask?” Cissnei giggled. There were red rings around her eyes.

Megara didn’t feel like laughing. She felt betrayed. The Butterfly Inn was something she had felt at home at, and now even that safe feeling was gone. Who else of the Butterfly girls had been secretly working for Shinra? Was Shin-Ra everywhere?

Megara stared darkly at the crisps.

“Are you going to buy something or will you step aside?” Cissnei asked.

“I don’t have any money - wait.” Megara patted the pockets of the black jacket, and pulled out something she thought might be a wallet.

It was a Shinra ID card. Two-Guns face with two grey eyes looked up at her.

She dropped the card.  _Ruluf. His first name is Ruluf._ She had never known. He had never told her that. 

The card clattered onto the floor face-down, and then lay still.

Megara could feel Cissnei’s tall presence frozen beside her, radiating cold.

MG suddenly she felt like she was even tinier, and suffocating. “Sorry, I-” She bend down to pick it up.

Cissnei was first. The Turk put a black shoe on the card, and claimed it.

Megara jerked her own hand back. She held both of her hands to her chest. She glanced up at Cissnei’s expression and see if she was mad, but the brothel madam had her face shielded by a curtain of red hair that the customers loved so much.

Cissnei slowly bend down, keeping her legs straight like a Butterfly lady, and took the card from the floor. She ran her thumb over Two-Guns’ face, brushing off the dust. Then she rubbed the card over her sleeve.

“Listen-,” Megara started. “I’m sorry-” she was out of breath and talking was bad. She didn’t know what to say but she wanted to apologise She didn’t want to see Butterfly-Cissnei have red-ringed eyes from crying and she didn’t want Turk-Cissnei be mad at her. And thus words tumbled out of Megara’s mouth when she didn’t know what to say at all. “I am so sorry. I was scared. I’m sorry. He just fell and-… he fell. I’m sorry.”

“Death is part of the job,”  Cissnei interrupted with a smile. The smile was happy but cold at the same time

To Megara it felt like Cissnei was lying.

Cissnei’s smile quickly faded. “…part of the process,” she said.

Megara said nothing.

Cissnei looked down on her.

Megara continued to say nothing. She felt like all happiness was being drained from her, as if she was waking up covered by snow. “Did you like TwoGuns?”

“No.” Cissnei jammed Two-Guns ID card in her pocket.

“I think I liked him too,” Megara whispered.

Cissnei turned away. “If you tell anyone any secrets about the Butterfly inn, then I’m going to hurt you real bad.”

“He was my friend…”

“I cannot have you publicize the organizational structure or the nature of transactions. That outpost needs to continue to be low-profile. You will not tell…”

“-or at least I thought he was my friend. For a while. ”

“-anyone. And I don’t want to see you back at the Inn again. Am I clear?”

“A while.”

“Am I clear, Moogle Girl?” Cissnei’s voice broke. She put one hand over her mouth.

“I heard you.”

Cissnei turned and walked away, taking big strides. She let out the quietest of sobs that she muffled with her fingertips, but Megara heard it anyway.

The Turk went to the door she had come from, but it already opened for her.

Professor Hojo drawled: “Why is a pretty young lady like you so sad?”

Cissnei hid her face behind the curtain of red hair.

Hojo reached out and put his hands on Cissnei’s shoulders: “What happened, m’ dear? Did someone die?”

Cissnei pushed past him.

Hojo smiled at her back: “Look at it this way, he will never do it again.”

Megara wondered if that comment would make Cissnei feel any better.

She disappeared to the next room. 

Professor Hojo was in Doctor Sun’s mind, and moved the borrowed body in a manner that looked as if he had not gotten used to it yet. For example, he bumped into one of the folded plastic chairs, which clattered to the ground. It made a lot of noise.

Megara stayed where she was.

The Professor Hojo picked it up and put it against the wall again, and then looked up. He spotted her. With a lift of his chin he beconed her. “Girl, I was just looking for you. Come with me. We’re going to do some science." 

“Science?”

“The experimental kind.” The Professor laughed. "Ah hah hah ha!”

Megara said nothing. She followed him.

The professor hummed a tune.

She quietly slipped her hand in the cup of his fingers and held on to him. 

The professor pretended not to notice.

Eventually she asked: “Can you get me something from the vending machine?”


	17. Chapter 17

“Before we start on the fun part of science,” Professor Hojo ushered her into a room that looked like an office. The plate on the door said, HEAD OF DEPARTMENT OF MEDICINE. Drawings of animals hung on the wall, and those were signed by Crim Sun. The professor closed the door behind her. “We should focus on the goal.”

How are we going to get Sephiroth back, Moogle Girl wondered.

As if he had been reading her thoughts again, Hojo started: “As for how we are going to get Se-”

Megara yanked his arm and then clasped her free hand over his old broad lips. “Shussssh!”

He looked _offended_.

“Let me check the room for microphones,” she said. “We are at a Shin-Ra building after all. And let’s talk about the not-secret stuff first!”

Hojo pulled away from her, “Where- when did you learn to check for those?”

MG let go of him and looked around the room. She sat down on her knees and checked under all the low furniture first, then worked her way up.

“A Turk taught me,” she said. She didn’t want to specify who. He might make fun of her. “That was at the inn, when he wanted me to store rejoy in the safe.”

Hojo just loitered, and made a few comments -he dropped a pleasant remark about one of the drawings-, then bowed his head to focus on his clipboard. “We’re going to do some science,” he said.

“A lot of it?” MG said.

“I certainly do hope so,” Hojo said. “But we can’t simply science away - pump you full of mako to see if you pop like a cherry.”

“Would I pop like a cherry?” She imagined herself all round, and the explosion.

“Of course not!” He scoffed. He muttered something to himself, then raised his voice. “Science and medicine are practions of logic. We need to think of the end goal before we can know where to start. Shin-Ra’s end goal, and the reason why Crim was employed, is no doubt to cure Geostigma.”

“Sephiroth’s rain didn’t cure anyone,” Megara agreed as lift the plant pot. The plant was dead.

“For how long has red Rejoy been around?” Hojo asked.

“I don’t know. Tseng said it was experimental. He had never seen it before. My guess is that red Rejoy only just appeared on the surface of Gaia: that’s why the Turks were so keen on keeping it to themselves.”

“Intriguing. Then you must be the first person, or one of the first, who ingested it. And you have been having it at regular intervals, no?”

“I guess?” she said. “Every time the rush stopped, I had a bit of Rejoy the size of a vial.”

“I would be interested to see whether the results you experienced are replicable.”

“Why?”

“Any kind of pharmaceutical testing is a numbers game. The effects of Rejoy in one subject is nothing. The same effects in multiple subjects, I am speaking of a statistically significant result in a statistically significant number of people, _that_ is a result.”

“Eh-”

Professor Hojo wrote things on his clipboard. “Lab tests could show how much Rejoy is actually in your bloodstream, and I could work out ts pharmacokinetics. Ingestion of the Rejoy - how much of it actually ended up in the bloodstream? How much of it is needed for SOLDIER-like strength? So much to explore…” he muttered to himself. “Will repeated doses cause…… adverse effects? What’s the safety margin? Street drugs are often not well manufactured, so each vial of Rejoy might have different concentrations of active ingredient. ”

“No,” she said.

He looked at her, as if roused from slumber. “No?”

“The courier told Tseng which mako reactor he got it from - and that’s where I went. There’s only one reactor that offers red Rejoy. But why do we need to research this?”

“Are you done monkeying around?”

“Almost?” MG said, as she balanced a chair on the desk, the climbed on the chair. She ran her hands over the stylish hanging lamp. “I think we’re good.”

“Shin-Ra’s goal is to find a cure for Geostigma to help the President.”

Moogle girl made a face. “I don’t want to help him.”

“The thing you and I want to do, is see if we can turn you into Sephiroth.”

“Turn me into Sephiroth?” she asked. “How about we just find him?”

“How?”

She shrugged.

“Do you feel his presence?” Hojo asked. “Does he whisper to you?”

“No.”

“Do you feel his presence in the Lifestream?” Hojo asked.

She shook her head.

Hojo looked relieved and unhappy at the same time.

“Do you think he was ignoring you when you were in the Lifestream?” Megara asked.

Hojo flipped a page on his clipboard.

“Do you _actually_ have a plan?” She asked. “Any idea where we can find him?”

“The Failure is the only connection we’ve got…” Hojo muttered to himself. “Sephiroth anchors himself to him… but how?”

“I don’t know.”

They talked for a little longer, trying to think of recreate Sephiroth, or reconstruct him, or find him. One suggestion was more futile than the other. Eventually when Megara suggested putting a ring of multicolored feathers on the floor as a magic circle and then clapping your hands, Hojo had enough of it.

The rest of the day was filled science stuff. They took some of her blood for tests, got samples of her saliva, asked questions about her health, carefully touched her geostigma-scarred skin, took photographs, and a team of scientists measured up her entire body. They also made a scan on her, a 3D one. They promised they would turn her into a simulator program model so she would be able to look at the back of her own head.

They didn’t eat dinner even though she was hungry. She stuck her nose in the air and smelled something nice. But the Professor seemed busy, and maybe the food was not for them.

At the end of the day, Professor Hojo brought her to a square cell with the bare minimum to make it look furnished like a bedroom. She hadn’t slept in - how long? A day? He made her brush her teeth, then walked to the door.

“Wait.” Megara pulled a pajama shirt over her head and stuck her arms through the sleeves. “I can’t sleep without my Moogle. It’s still at Dr. Sun’s house.”

Professor Hojo flicked out the lights. “Of course you can. You had a long day. I will wake you up for a Rejoy drink at 03:00 hours. Get into bed.”

“I really need my Moogle,” she said, but she did slip under the super duper soft covers. The bed even bounced under her. She swung her legs under the sheets, and lay down. She hit the pillow with her fists. “No, Professor, don’t walk away!”

He stopped. “Go to sleep, girl.”

“You’re supposed to stand in the doorway. Only then I will fall asleep without my Moogle. You really have to bring it tomorrow, will you?”

The old man sighed. “Yes, yes. If you do your best. Make me proud.”

“Then you’ll give Moogle to me?”

“Yes, yes, I will.”

“Don’t walk away!” She said. She sat up in bed, despite how tired she was.

“Lay down,” he sounded annoyed. “Sleep.”

That made her lay down again. “You have to stand in the doorway like my daddy used do. He would stand there, until Xander and I fell asleep. You can’t leave until I’m asleep. Ok?”

Hojo was a silent silhouette, framed by the light of the door.

“Promise, Professor?”

“Yes, I’ll stay.”

“And if you’re going to turn me into Sephiroth, you’re kind of Sephiroth’s daddy.” She yawned. “And then if you stand in the doorway, then you will be kind of my daddy too.”

The sleep got a hold of her faster than she had expected. She yawned and her jaw clicked, she couldn’t keep her eyes open, and she snuggled into the pillow.

Professor Hojo stayed in the doorway. She even heard him take a picture.

She fell asleep with a smile.


	18. Chapter 18

“Stop the simulation!” Professor Hojo said, and raised his hand. Instantly, the virtual-reality simulation stopped. “This is futile. Girl, come with me. We’ll give you another mako treatment.”

Moogle Girl pulled the headset from her eyes and gently lowered the video-room device to the floor so it wouldn’t break, but didn’t care to tidy it up. She stepped over it and limped to the exit, holding her arm that was scarred and painful. She licked the blood from her lip and then from her wrist. She hated monsters. Hated them. She understood that she had to fight them for ‘test results’ but why did the scientists have to simulate them at such a high level?

 

“Everyone, take 5 minutes. Reset the simulation. Moogle Girl, into the medication room with you. You were slowing down again. I will top up your Rejoy level.” Hojo grabbed her by the neck and lead her into a separate room.

“I wasn’t slowing down…” she said. The monsters were just getting faster and stronger every time she completed a task. Or maybe she was slowing down. She had to preform, she had promised the Professor she would. Or else she’d never become powerful enough to be turned into Sephiroth. She flopped down, and he gave her a potion. She drank it, her wounds disappeared with a hot feeling as if someone stitched them from the inside.

And then she started to sob. She did not cry because she was unhappy - she was just… so tired. And the tears ran over her cheeks.

The professor filled a needle with Rejoy. The Rejoy he tapped came from the barrel she had brought all the way from reactor #2 to Doctor Sun’s house. It saddened her that Shin-Ra had confiscated it. Shinra owned everything. Even her.

That thought scared her. Did they owN her? Did they? She was in their building, doing their training program, working with their scientists… while Rufus Shinra was her arch enemy! If it wasn’t for Professor Hojo being on her side, Megera would think she was trapped here. She didn’t want to be owned by anyone, least of all by The Company.

She wondered how much Rejoy was left in the barrel. It would run out someday.  

“Almost done.” Professor Hojo took the needle from Megara’s arm, and patted a bit of cotton on the bead of blood that welled up. Then he plastered a band-aid over it. “Stop crying and come with me. Back into the simulator with you.”

She pretended she didn’t hear him.

“The team’s ready and you’re not there. They all want you to be there to start the tests.” He put the needle away. Then he stood before her, and lazily gestured for her to get up.

For some reason, that tower-over-Megara-and-tell-her-what-to-do attitude hit her nerve all wrong. She’d just come out of the simulator to fight a frogoir, and now he was going to send her back in?

“NO!” she screamed, and in the scream she leaned her upper body forward as to give a physical push to the loudness of her voice. At the same time, her fists grabbed the chair so hard the plastic cracked under her fingers. “I WON’T.”

At the outburst, Hojo’s eyebrows raised to his hairline.

Then she continued to sob. She felt instantly stupid for yelling at him. He had no idea what it was like to run around when the frogoir jumped, and hope you’d not get stabbed by that spear it had. Hojo didn’t know what it was like to be in battle, real battle, when the beast’ claws would leave marks in your arm at any wrong move. So she was scared! Of course she was! And she felt stupid for crying - she wasn’t little any more. And she felt stupid that she couldn’t do the simulator thing the team wanted her to do. She couldn’t do anything right.

The Professor sighed, and jammed his hands into his pockets. “Does the simulation program scare you?” He stood before her still, wide-legged and like a tower.

His shadow fell over her bare knees so she pulled up her legs. She hugged them tight and pressed her forehead on her kneecaps. She continued to cry. Then she nodded her head, and then shook it.

“Which is it? Yes or no?”

She shrugged.

He turned around, and dipped to the other side of the room to get her a box of tissues, which she grabbed three of and put them against her face. She just wanted to be held, just hugged, but the professor wasn’t going to touch her.

“I k-k-killed him,” she said. “I killed Two-Guns. It was an accident but I killed him. He tripped and now he’s dead and it’s all my fault.”

“So that’s it? _That_ is why you won’t attack the creatures in the simulator?”

She grabbed more tissues. Snot rushed out of her nose like a tide. “And why I won’t eat meat. I became a vegetarian. I don’t want to kill again. I don’t want anyone else to die. Two-Guns is dead because of me and-” the rest of her voice was left in an incomprehensible string of sobs with whines.

Hojo rubbed the bridge of his nose, pushing up his glasses as he did so. He then pinched his nostrils, and offered her more tissues from the box.

She dropped three balls of wet tissue paper onto the ground, and grabbed new sheets. “Everyone around me, dies. I bring bad luck.”

“There’s no such thing as continuous person-bound bad luck,” Hojo said.

She said nothing.

“Unless your surname is Crescent,” he muttered to himself. She thought he looked like he was trying to joke, but she didn’t get it.

Megara stared at her bare knees, and wiped her eyes on them. “Will you bring me my Moogle tomorrow?”

“Yes yes,” he said, just like he had said yesterday and the day before.

She didn’t know if she still believed him, but what other choice did she have but do what he said? Hojo was the boss. Everyone did everything he said, and the Department had made “tremendous discoveries and rediscoveries” ever since the Professor was living in Doctor Sun’s body.“ Most of those discoveries had to do with Megara, and no one credited her. It was all the Professor’s magic ability, while she was locked up in her cell like a pet when they didn’t need her.

And at night when it was dark and she was in her bed, her brain was like: _hey, you know what we haven’t thought of in a while, monsters._ And then all the monsters of the day, whether she had killed them or not, would come alive. They would crawl out of the simulator, crawl over the floors and walls and ceiling of the corridors like giant tadpoles that only have front legs. Their beaks would be red with blood, and their’ eyes would glow in the dark. They would be mad. They want revenge, and then they would slither through the door, dip in the darkness of the room, go to her bed and-

"Get up.”

At least in the slums she was free. Being indoors felt like a trap, and the ceilings and walls were suffocating. Maybe she had spent too much time outside to live indoors. She wanted streets, and skylight, and On the other hand, she’d been fine in the Butterfly Inn… so maybe it was just the Science Department that made her feel this way.

“Child,” Hojo said, and hunched down in front of her chair. His knees clicked and he seemed a little bit unstable - but he was trying.

Suddenly her hands started shaking, and it felt like she had had five cups of coffee. Her whole body got a surge of energy, and she felt physically ready to jump off the chair and run a loop around the world. But mentally - not so much. She sat down on her trembling hands to avoid they would get seen by Hojo, and avoid being sent into the simulator so quickly again.

“When a person dies, their energy is taken back by the Planet. Sephiroth calls out to certain types of persons: souls of unhappy people go to the Red Lifestream,” Hojo said.

She said: “Because only those people have seen what kind of miserable wreck this Planet is?”

“I theorize so.”

“You don’t know much, do you?” She looked up.

He didn’t look happy, which made her happy. 

He looked like he was going to reply, but as soon as he opened his mouth, she got up. And because she was fast as a flash, he didn’t say anything. The old guy had to do effort in order not to fall over, _hah hah ha_.

She wondered if Hojo actually knew anything about Sephiroth’s whereabouts. And if he knew what Sephiroth was planning… At first she had thought that he had been keeping information from her, but it seemed not to be the case. Hojo simply didn’t know. 

Sephiroth had helped her defeat Two-Guns, but he wasn’t talking to the Professor. That left room for only one explanation, which was that Hojo wasn’t cool enough to Sephiroth’s standards. 

She pushed the door open with a tiny bit of force. It slammed against the wall, then bounced back. Everyone stared at her. She stopped it with her hand. “Sorry.” Rejoy strength was difficult to handle sometimes. 

She lift her chin as she walked. Following the Professor’s train of thought, then Two-Guns’ death had actually _strengthened_ the Red Lifestream. Because Two-Guns had been unhappy. And the more souls were in the Red Lifestream, the stronger it would get! So maybe, killing _unhappy_ things wasn’t so bad. 

She wondered if Cissnei would end up in the Red Lifestream too, because she’d been crying last time Megara had talked to her. And other Turks…. - Tseng? Would Tseng be unhappy enough to end up in the Red Lifestream? But maybe Tseng was not really unhappy, but simply permanently constipated. And Rufus Shinra…

One day, she would kill him. For Platefall. 

And she would kill him while he was happy so he wouldn’t enter her Red Lifestream.

“Start simulation,” she commanded. She put on her video-room goggles, and the frogair appeared before her. Hojo may be useless to Sephiroth, but she would make sure she wouldn’t be!


	19. Chapter 19

“Hey little girl,” a male nurse asked. “For how long have you been standing here in the hallway?”

Moogle Girl had both of her hands and nose against the glass of the vending machine. The glass had hand prints all over it, because she visited every break.

The glass reflected his face, and the mirror image’s face fit perfectly between her thumbs. She brought her thumbs closer together and pretended to squeeze his head like a grape. And pop, all his brains would come out of his eyes and nose and mouth - just as happened to people with Geostigma. She imagined his black brains go all over his white lab coat like goo.

And then she felt guilty and turned around. “Not so long, why?”

“The professor is looking for you.”

“Why?” 

“More blood tests,” he said.

“Why?”

“We want to determine what the Rejoy did to your body.”

“Why?”

“To see if we can cure the remaining Geostigma survivors.”

“You mean, cure President Shinra.”

The nurse sighed. “We are working for the WRO now - we are different.”

“How?”

“Stop asking stuff.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s annoying, that’s why. Shut up. And come with me.” He grabbed her by the back of her collar, and the plastic hospital gown cracked like it was laughing at her. It laughed with every step she took.

Trapped hahaha, you’re trapped.

She looked over her shoulder to the singing vending machine, and then the nurse pushed her through the first set of doors.

They walked back to the room with the simulator, and the nurse pushed her through the automatically opening doors first. She loved the breaks, didn’t like the science stuff that followed. The nurse let go of her neck. “I found her at the vending machine again.”

She was so strong she could break his arm if she wanted to. But instead, she stumbled forward and landed on one knee. “Ouf.”

“Careful,” Hojo commented without looking up, only registering that she had fallen.

She looked over her shoulder and stuck her tongue out at the male nurse, who didn’t see it because he was at his computer station again.

“Breaks’ over,” Hojo monotoned as he looked at a clipboard.

The simulation started again, and some other lab assistant forced the video-room goggles over her head without minding her pigtails, which was really annoying because she wasn’t a child anymore. She could put it on herself!

She used two hands to fix her hair. A good while ago, she had learnt that killing unhappy things was good because it strengthened Sephiroth’s Red Lifestream. And now she could kill monsters without feeling like the worst person in the world, killing had become easier. Almost too easy. Nowadays she passed through the easy levels before coffee break, and if she fought hard, got to Low-Medium before lunch. She fought during the day, and during the evenings she went over the monster catalog. The colorful pictures were sometimes scary, but it helped to know what a red-dotted Zebraah is before meeting one in the arena.

She lifted her arm, and with the use of her Fire materia, she blasted a gale of fire to the Zebraah. It stood on its hind legs, and let out a loud neigh. She dodged the sound wave by rolling under its front legs, and elbowing up into its ribcase. Bam, she broke its rib, which punctured a lung. Now it was only a time before the lungs would fill with blood and it would drown. And counting by the amount of sound waves this mare was producing, it wouldn’t be long. Until then, Megara just had to dodge the echoes. And maybe set the tail-tentacles on fire.

The alarm clock rang loudly, making everyone in the lab squeeze their eyes shut and suppress another groan. The alarm clock was not even a cool one - it was shaped like an egg and when it rang, it almost drilled from the table. It was one straight from doctor Sun’s kitchen, she was sure.

“Stop the simulation,” the Professor said. “Time to top up the Rejoy in your blood values.”

“But I hadn’t beaten the Zebraah yet!” Moogle girl said as she took off her helmet. She went into the syringe room, and flopped down on her chair. She looked at the barrel of mako, and before Hojo came in, she quickly lift it up. There was barely any left. Soon Shin-Ra would have to get a new supply.

But where would they get it, from a seller that would come to the Butterfly Inn, or from Reactor #2 itself?

Would Cissnei be reaping a boy off the streets right now, and telling him to behave like a butterfly, telling him that there was one way he could avoid being in debt, and that was by playing courier for Tseng?

MG put the barrel down - just as Hojo opened the door.

He dragged himself in. “Don’t touch that. Red mako is as explosive as the green variety.”

She rolled her eyes.

Recently she had started to see what Hojo was doing, which was training her as if she were Sephiroth, and her attitude towards him had begun to change. She now disliked him because he didn’t see her as Megara but as prototype-Sephiroth.

And yet, a tiny part also clung to him. He was the man that stood by her door frame every night so she could fall asleep, and he still had her moogle plush. What else could she do, but what he wished of her? Thus every day she went into the VR without comment, without complaint, without smile.

Studying his books had also begun to pay off. It is funny how quickly one learn to recognize monsters and attacks and their weak spots when your facing them. To her it was serious business, but Hojo seemed to… enjoy it. He sent bigger and bigger monsters at her. Some had crazy high-level attacks, and some attacked without interval, and some were almost impossible to defeat.

And he seemed to love it!

He wasn’t proud of her. He was proud of his monsters. It was just a manner of time before he would throw some crazy high-level Behemoth at her and then she would lose.

The first sign of there something being wrong was when the Professor smiled as he stuck the syringe in her arm. The dose of Rejoy was normal, everything was normal. She didn’t understand what was going on.

Then door of the room opened and Tseng stuck his head around the door. “Doctor Sun.”

Professor Hojo took the syringe out.

“Doctor Sun,” Tseng repeated. He ignored MG glaring daggers at him.

“Huh? Oh, yes, what is it, Tseng?”

“Mind if I watch the next round?”

“Don’t,” said MG.

“You would do it anyway, what do you need my permission for,” Professor Hojo said. He dabbed a cotton bud on the place in her arm that the syringe had punctured, and then cleaned up.

Tseng closed the door.

“When are you going to turn me into him?” she asked. Him, Sephiroth. She asked because the Turk was near, but Hojo remained unfazed. He didn’t even look worried, much to her annoyance.

“Eager, aren’t you?” the Professor said. “So keen on losing your identity.”

That answer gave her a pang of worry in her stomach, and she didn’t like that thought very much. She eyed him, then got up, and went back into the simulator. But this match was different than all previous ones.

She eyed Tseng through the glass as she put on her video room headset. He had his arms folded at the front over his chest, making him look twice as broad. He was one tall shadow, all black, next to the tiny Professor in the white lab coat. Both men were Wutaiians working for Shin-Ra. She wondered if they were happy. She wondered why she should care.

Tseng looked like he hadn’t slept in days, and there were dark lines under his eyes. Maybe there was something wrong with Rufus Shinra. That had to be the case, if Mr. Constipated himself had come here to judge her progress in the scientific Rejoy-to-cure-Geostigma campaign.

She positioned the goggles over her eyes, and the digital world began to build up around her. What she saw was terrible. Her breath caught. An icy hand wrapped itself around her heart and tried to tug it out of her chest.

No, she thought. Anything but this! No, no, no.

They didn’t send a pack of Frogois.

They didn’t send a Dualhorn.

They didn’t send a Behemoth.

“Mission, start!” the video room’s automatic voice said.

She stayed still, and stared at the human figure. She would have much preferred a Behemoth over this. She couldn’t fight an actual person. She wouldn’t.

“All-right,” the digital man cheered. “I can take you on!”

He reached behind him, and took a traditional training sword from the magnet his back.

Green letters floated above his head, and usually that meant Professor Hojo was trying to help her. When she would not know the name of a monster, he would manually add the name to the simulation so she would remember in what part of the monster catalog the creature would be, and often by seeing its name, she would suddenly remember its strengths and weaknesses.

Not today.

Simulation zackfair_class3.exe swung his wrist to his ear, and thereby raising the sword. “Ooh, yeah!”

He was fast! With one kick, he pushed off from the floor and dashed horizontally to her, then slashed his sword.

She ducked. Pure automatism.

The sword went over her head.

He used his velocity to push her over with his shoulder. She fell back, as he prepared for a second strike: overhead, like chopping a log of wood. Or in Megara’s case, her tummy.

She stared at zackfair.exe.

He lift the sword above his head, and his eyes were mako green. He hacked.

She rolled. The sword hit the place in the floor where she had been a moment ago. The blade carved little cracks in the floor. Those were immediately digitally repaired.

She rolled once more, and got to a crouch position. “I can’t do this!”

He was fast. His sword lashed out at her. She dodged left. He swung again, and again. A combo! That was unexpected, so she didn’t dodge right. The blade hit her leg.

“Ow!”

The intercom rang: “You cannot keep dodging forever.”

Stupid Hojo! She hoped he would choke on his own tongue.

Her enemy pulled the blade back, and aimed for another hit. While he raised his sword, she limped-ran to the other side of the square simulator room, hand on the cut in her leg. The blood gushed between her fingers. She didn’t feel the pain very much -someone was chasing her, she had hardly time to think. The most important concern she now had was the fact her leg wouldn’t work properly.

He slashed. MG ran in stupid annoying circles until she limped. She stopped. He dashed and slashed.

Then the sim smiled and asked: “Wanna call it quits? I don’t think you’re trying!”

She needed time to learn how to predict his attacks! And time was something she didn’t have, because at every corner when she paused to catch her breath, Zackfair.exe would slide behind her and attack. And he was two heads taller than her!

She hit the inside of his elbow, and the sword scraped her shoulder.

What could she do? What could she do?

She blasted a gale of fire to his face, but he dashed to the side as quickly as he could dash forward. It was sheer luck that his blade missed her thigh. She was glad she was thin.

Could she kick him? No! He would block with his sword and cut off her foot!

Punch? She launched one into his tummy but he grinned like a werewolf as the pad on his tummy absorbed the punch. Then his knee shot up, and he hit her in the stomach.

She folded double. All air disappeared. She gasped for air, but her body was still recovering. She couldn’t breathe in. And when she did, she had barely time to see a flash of silver. He was going to hit her.

She should give up. If she gave up now, he was going to hit her and win. It would hurt. Sword in her torso. Few weeks in the hospital department. Maybe she would lay side-by-side with President Shinra.

Or maybe she would die.

 _Veni, veni, venias,_  
Ne me mori facias.  
_Gloriosa, generosa._

Megara’s vision suddenly gained a red mist around the borders. The rest of the world disappeared, and only the sim and her existed as if she had a tunnel vision.

The sword swung down, as if in slow-motion. She stayed right where she was and didn’t move, even though time was going so slow now that she could easily have ducked for the possibly lethal hit. She was going to let him hit her. The blade cut into her upper arm.

-and then he froze.

The digital sword was embedded into the skin and muscles of her bare upper arm, perhaps a centimeter deep. And Zackfair.exe had frozen completely, a smile on his face.

She moved to the side, away from him. What had happened? Had time stopped? Was this a test? Or was this an effect of the Rejoy?

The simulation shattered into a million little pixels that rained onto the floor and the goggles became black. Suddenly she understood Professor Hojo had given the sign to cut off the simulation. She imagined Tseng to be laughing now.

She pulled off the headset, and looked to the Turk behind glass wall. He wasn’t laughing. He didn’t even give her one of his icy smiles.

They just stared at each other, glaring.

“What was that good for?” Professor Hojo said. He turned to go into the simulator, but Megara was already on her way out.

She put the headset under her arm and faced him at the door of the video room. They met at the threshold. “Nothing, I froze up.”

“You didn’t freeze. You made the conscious decision not to move,” Tseng said.

“I froze up,” Megara bit at them. “I was scared.”

Tseng didn’t look convinced, and neither did Professor Hojo.

The scientist started: “You are-”

“Don’t lecture me on running away! Don’t lecture me on fighting to become more powerful!” She balled her hands to fist. What did he know! He was just playing as Shin-Ra’s puppet, showing ‘his hard work’ off to Director Tseng. Well, not today! Megara was not going to fight a human simulation for Tseng’s sick enjoyment and Hojo’s personal glee and glory.

“You really don’t know how to-” revive Sephiroth. Her breath stopped. She glanced at Tseng, who stayed stoic. But Professor Hojo had understood.

She rattled on: “Or do you? Huh? No, and I thought you wouldn’t! You are a useless second-rate scientist! You’re unfair! I went in to fight a monster and you, dad, tossed a human at me!”

She shoved the headset into his arms, and pushed past him. She had to go to the vending machine, and put her head against the glass to calm down. She had to calm down or else she would punch a Wutaiian face instead of a simulation’s.

Tseng was in her way next, and she stormed right at him. He did not seem planning to move.

She rushed forward, face twisted in anger. That stupid little trick was beyond 'unfair’, she should have called it betrayal. He had betrayed her!

Tseng remained where he was.

At the last moment before collision, they both angled their shoulders and let the other pass. She would have pick-pocketed him if she hadn’t been shaking so much.

She disappeared to the hallway.

The automatic doors closed behind her, and she paced on. To the vending machine, to the vending machine. Yummy cookies. Chocolate bars. Honey Tornados. Great Sephiroth above, she could use some crisps now, and eat them all angrily. They would crack and crunch under her jaws and she would grind them till pulp. And then stuff another handful into her mouth. Crush crush crunch.

She headbutted the glass of the vending machine.

She breathed out, and the glass fogged up with her breath. It hummed to her, and she put her hands on the glass, saying hello. For a few seconds it was completely silent in the hallway, and it was just her and the machine.

“Child-,” Hojo said.

She stiffened, and then whipped around. “No! Give me my Moogle! Do you have it? No?”

He looked annoyed, more than anything else. Except for greasy, because his hair was so greasy it hung in wires past his face. “I already sent for someone to get it.”

“I don’t believe you any more! I won’t talk to you until I have it in my arms!” And she put her hands on her ears and her forehead against the vending machine. “Lalalalalala! I can’t hear you!”

“Megara,” he said.

She saw him mouth her name, but didn’t react. As she stared at the crisps, she decided she didn’t want to become Sephiroth any more under Professor Hojo’s lead. He was useless. He didn’t know how to contact Sephiroth. He wasn’t cool enough for Sephiroth, and now she understood why. He was a traitor and a deciet. He had manipulated her into playing Shinra’s game all this time, without actual progress into finding the god himself. She didn’t want to go into the simulator any more.

Hojo mumbled a string of words to her that she ignored by singing that song Gloriosa Generosa on repeat, those two words gave comfort, and sometimes she added Sephiroth’s name into the rhythm.

Then the same male nurse from before came running in. She lift one thumb a little out of her ear.

Hojo finished with: “Your agitated breathing shows that you are about to announce some fresh disaster. Let’s hear it, Frederick.”

The man’s face was red. “There’s a Moogle in the simulator with the program.”

“Oh dear, a real Moogle?”

Fredrick put his hands on his knees and panted. “We don’t know how it got in! The simulation suddenly started because it detected a life form.”

Megara whipped around. “A real Moogle? A really real Moogle?”

“Yeah,” Frederick panted. “Flappy tiny purple wings and all.”

“Use your indoors voice, Megara. Calm down. It will never survive for long in there.”

Zackfair.exe! The program would completely destroy the tiny creature!

She completely forgot her anger. She pushed away from the machine and went to the doors. “We must save it, Professor!”

Hojo put his hand over the doorknob, possessing it, keeping it shut. “It seems like we need a savior indeed. Too bad you just resigned for the day.”

Megara bit the knuckle of her thumb. “Let me go in, let me go! I can save it, I can defeat the simulation!”

“But you’re wounded.”

“I’m fine! Please, let me go!”

“I would feel very bad to get you into such danger…”

“I can do it!” she said, and almost did a jump at her spot.

Hojo took his hand from the doorknob and pushed it open. MG dashed past Fredrick and raced back to the simulator.

The assistant and the scientist remained behind.

Professor Hojo folded his hands behind his back, and looked after her. “Will she draw on other knowledge to survive, I wonder?”

“…You sure have changed, Doctor Sun.”

* * *

 

She yanked the headset from its hook on the wall and dashed into the simulator almost before she had it on. One of her pigtails was caught under the strap but it didn’t matter. What mattered was the moogle that was in the corner of the room, and Zackfair.exe striding towards it. The little creature was on the ground, and had the exact same colour as MG’s plush toy. It wasn’t moving. Poor thing!

“Hey, bully!” she said.

Zackfair.exe turned around, and she immediately regretted her insult. He strode towards her like a bull, and the spikes on his head made him look like those scary TV rock stars that did makeup on their faces. His eyes were bright blue and without mercy. Get the job done, go home - that was the look on his face. He would hack her down for sure.

“Firaga!” she screamed, holding out her materia. A gale of fire blasted from her hand and suddenly she saw what a bad idea it was. The tiny moogle lay behind the simulation, and could get burned too.

She turned her hand, and missed him on purpose. The cloud of fire almost hit the tiny creature, but missed. Good. She didn’t want to burn the wings off.

He went for a horizontal slash. She dodged his sword.

Now what?! She couldn’t blast his face off with fire, couldn’t continue dodging.

Zackfair.exe started a series of mean combos. It took all of her energy to move out of the way in time. She panted. The egg-shaped alarm went off, signalling to the entire lab that it was time for her next shot of Rejoy, but she really had no time to be thinking on that.

She felt, and knew that her powers were dimming, and couldn’t beat him in a physical battle. Her foot could get chopped off.

He chopped at her.

She tried to lunge forward and get hold of his sword, and her hands closed over the hilt. For a second she thought it worked. But then he lift his arm, and her feet lift off the ground. She had to let go. The only thing she got was a nasty scratch over her right underarm.

She was losing speed, but not as much as the time with Two-Guns when he had been trying to kill her. This time, there seemed to be enough Rejoy in her blood that she could continue. The Red Lifestream had been changing her body, and she blessed every bit of superhuman speed she had left.

He did a horizontal swing and she ducked. He swung his sword in the shape of an X, and she stumbled left and then right. He tried to dash-and-stab her.

She had foreseen it. She stuck out her foot - tripped him. When he bend forward, she made a happy jump on the inside - it had worked! She lift her leg to knee him in the tummy like he had done to her. Payback time.

He grabbed her leg and lift her up.

Suddenly she was in the air, and lost her balance. “Hey!”

He tossed her to the far other side of the room. She sailed through the air and then landed hard on the floor, rolled like a rag doll, and came to a stop. Everything hurt, and she was dizzy.

Zackfair.exe was coming for her.

She felt something soft at her back, and realized lay nearby the moogle. She looked down, and saw her own toy. No, her little brother’s toy. She stared at it. Was it really-? Yes. There was no mistake, there was a sticker on its leg, and the stitching on its back was open. Among the softest bounciest plush lay a materia sphere - it was embedded inside the toy.

It was the last of the three spheres she had stolen from Cloud’s treasure chest in the church. One had fallen into the mako reactor’s swirling liquid, one was in her hand. The last one was in her Moogle. But because she hadn’t had access to her toy… this was her chance!

Who knew what it did! Maybe it could summon a beast, or blast water, or do something to make her win this fight!  

Zackfair.exe was here. “Ooh yeah!” he said. He heaved his sword above his head, and was going to cut her in Bottom Megara and Top Megara.

If she reached to her back to grab her moogle, then he would cut them both in half. If she kicked herself away, he would cut Moogle. She could lose Xander’s moogle forever.

Zack’s sword was at its highest point, and started making its decent. “Hyaa!”

Megara looked up with big eyes.

She reacted. She reached behind her as she kicked away, and while the sword didn’t cut her, did did cut something else - the moogle. There was a yank on her arm, and she saw the big round red nose was cut in half.

She let out a feral scream. She kicked up and hit the back of the simulation’s knee. He fell onto his other knee like a knight.

She sat up, and punched his jaw. She rolled onto one knee, and now they were at the same height. She hammered her fists onto his head. When he tried to get up, she was faster.

She slammed her foot into his throat, and suddenly the list of weak spots from the monster-book came back. Dangerous monster, category High, class 3, zackfair.

She went for the throat, spleen, crotch. His weakest point was his heart, but that was too deep in his ribcase to reach.

Megara held his throat with one hand, and he stood up. Her feet lift off the floor, but he was still trying to get rid of her hand around his throat.

She kicked her legs and the handle of her sword bumped against her knee. She cut her leg, but that was fine.

Zackfair.exe clawed at  her hands. Her grip loosened, and his throat was free. He stumbled one step back.

She dropped. She landed on her feet. She pulled the sword from the ground and from her poor moogle. She turned it in her hands. With one hand holding the handle, the other hand clenching the blade, she jabbed it forward. She knew she was cutting into her own hand palm, but steering was important.

Heart.  

The tip of the sword pierced his shirt, and then scraped over a rip. It went smoothly in, sliding between the space between the third and the fourth rib.

He stared into her eyes, their noses were inches apart. “It’s over…” 

He burst into pixels.

The simulation died as Zack died, and Megara was greeted by a thunderous applause.

She ripped the video-room goggles from her eyes. Behind the glass, all the lab personal had turned towards her. Everyone clapped for her, the Professor and Frederick and even Tseng (albeit slower and not like he meant it). The applause rang in her ears, filled it, and she wondered if this was what killing ought to feel like.

It felt good.

* * *

“What kind of materia is this?” MG asked as Professor Hojo sewed and stitched up the back of her Moogle so the filling wouldn’t spill out. She held the materia under his glasses. They were in the syringe room next to the simulator labs.

He pushed her hand away. “One thing at the time. That’s Lightning. Don’t use it indoors. Sit down.”

She didn’t sit down on her chair. She went to the door. She glanced out, and then closed it again. “Everyone’s gone.”

“It’s past six.”

“Already?”

“Again. I am going to see if I can fix your Moogle’s nose,” he said.

“Please don’t hurt him.”

“Toys don’t have feelings.”

“They say the same thing about scientists,” she said. 

“Today you called me-… ah, nevermind.”

She stuck out her tongue at him, but he didn’t see it anyway. She rolled her eyes and glanced out of the door again. Tseng was going over document he shouldn’t hold in his hands, and she wondered if she should call out to him and startle him, or tell Hojo what he was doing. She grinned thinking about both scenarios, and didn’t decide. She watched Tseng go about. He even took pictures with his phone from graphs. Spy. She would totally tell Hojo on him.

After a while, watching Tseng became kinda boring. All he did was touch paper.

“Done,” said Professor Hojo. He lift up her moogle plushie.

Megara turned around, and froze in shock-horror at the sight. “Its’ nose! What did you do to its’ nose!”

“Well, the previous nose was cut in half,” the Professor drawled. “…and this was the only toy ball that-”

“It’s black!”

“-would be big enough. You can hardly see Dark Nation’s chew marks on it.”

“But it’s black!” She dashed forward like she had seen simulation Zack do, and startled the professor by being at his side so quick. She pulled the toy from his hands and hugged it tight. “Poor moogle.”

“Careful, the glue is still drying.”

Megara sent him an angry frown. “I wanted you to repair the red nose!”

“The red one was torn to shreds. Like I  said, this toy I had laying around was the only thing of comparable size. Be grateful or get nothing.”

The thought of being separated from Moogle made her crush it into an embrace even harder. She turned to give him the cold shoulder, and grumbled a 'thank you,’ over her shoulder. She frowned. She inspected the moogle. Its new nose was at the exact same spot as the old one, only it was black and scratched. And by hugging, she had pressed it deeper into its face so the glue had come up at the edges and now Moogle looked like it had flown into a wall. It looked a bit like a pug dog. It was ugly.

“You ruined it,” she muttered.

“To your sleeping quarters, young lady.” Hojo stood up, and it signaled MG that it was time to go.

“Tseng is going through your lab results and he’s stealing pages.”

“He’s allowed to. And he’s not stealing pages but photographing them.”

“How do you know what he’s doing?”

“I’ve known little Tseng for a long time.”

“Is he also allowed to take that drawing of Sephiroth by doctor Sun from the wall and putting it in his pocket?” Megara improvised. There was no drawing of Sephiroth.

But the Professor quickly looked at her, and then paced to the door. Megara grabbed Two-Guns’ jacket from the coat rack and swung it around her shoulders. She slipped by unseen, through the doors that lead not to the sleeping quarters.

Less than a minute later there was a loud crash, that interrupted a conversation about Megara’s eyes, in particular the change of color, to red, and the change of shape, to a split pupil for a brief second. It had happened pre-interruption of the simulation. But the video image angle was extraordinary bad, so zooming in didn’t prove Tseng’s point. But the loud noise caused the men to halt their discussion and summoned both the Professor and the Turk to the hallway.

The vending machine lay on its side. The glass was smashed, the metal flap was broken. _ERROR_ , flickered on the screen. _RETURNED CHANGE._

“It seems our little angel took flight,” Professor Hojo said as he overlooked the crime scene. “With snacks and pocket money.”


	20. Chapter 20

“Bye,” Megara said to the doorman as she dashed to the doors of the WRO science department, escaping to find Sephiroth. With his help, she could make Rufus Shinra pay for Platefall.

As he held the door open, she zoomed under his elbow. He turned around to look at her over his She rushed down the white steps and jumped with two feet in a puddle of the street. Mud splashed on her brown boots. Real mud felt better than video-room digital mud. It felt wetter, colder. Bye-bye, science department, hope to never see you again!

She looked over her shoulder and locked eyes with the doorman, who stared at her. She couldn’t blame him for staring - she imagined she looked weird, with Two-Guns jacket over her shoulder- it functioned as an improvised ‘bag’ that contained all her candies and coins.

The idea that he should maybe stop her was written all over his face, but then they locked eyes. The man jolted. He looked away and stepped back.

Moogle Girl kept her toy in the cup of her shoulder, and ran.

Car horns beeped: the inner center of Edge was busy - rush hour was at hand, and no one liked a girl running through the traffic when the lights were red, much less when they were green.

A woman stuck her head out of the window and yelled: “Hey! Get off the road! You idiot!”

Moogle girl looked at the woman. The driver’s mouth opened, but no sound came out.

Moogle girl ducked her ears between her shoulders and arrived at the other side of the street. She ran past pedestrians that all seemed to be going in the opposite direction and all stared at her. Then she chased after a bicycle guy by running very fast. The coins from the vending machine in her knapsack slammed against her shoulder blades with every step. With every step it was easier to breathe, and easier to smile.

After running a block, she was still in the middle of rush hour. So she hitched a hike by grabbing the window railing on the back of the bus, skipped, and put one foot on the exhaust pipe. She wavered when the bus drove around the METOORFALL monument roundabout, but she dug her nails deeper into the silicone, and hung on.

In the center of Edge, people ignored slum kids, but here at the outer parts of Edge, they the people did something worse than ignoring: they ignored them because they felt guilty. But no one wanted to admit to feel guilty, so they invented reasons to hate the slums.

Moogle Girl jumped off the exhaust pipe of the bus and dashed to the pavement. She bumped into a man, and lost her balance. She landed on her bum. A sharp pain raced up her spine. “Ow!”

He spat between her knees. “Whore.”

She looked up to him, and suddenly he fell silent. He cleared his nose and walked away.

“Ouf,” she said, and scrambled to her feet. She dusted off her hands, picked up her moogle plushie, and glanced around. The guy that walked away kicked a can, which hit the wall of a house. The suburbs from Edge had more litter. There was a layer of dust over the cars and over the windows. The fact that people didn’t rinse it off, meant that the weather forecast predicted another sandstorm. Being on the streets during a sandstorm was terrible, so she should get to the Mako Reactor fast.

It would be best to get back to Midgar and to Reactor #2.

“Rufus Shinra must die,” she muttered to herself as she walked and spoke one syllable per step. “Ru-fus Shin-ra is gon-na die,” she panted. “by-my-hands.”

Keeping Shinra away from Rejoy was one of these things she needed to do. Sooner or later personnel from Shin-Ra would come to the reactor to collect Rejoy, but she wouldn’t let them. Rejoy lead to voices in her head that chanted Sephiroths name. Maybe other voices from the chorus knew where he was.

Another one, was finding Sephir- “OW!” Pain exploded at the back of her head. Her teeth clashed together over her tongue, and drew blood. She tasted copper.

The pebble that had hit the back of her head now fell on the road.

Around her was debris stacked as high as houses. At the top of it, stood a group of children. Some were younger, but most were her age or older. Some were even teenagers. They had a mean or playful expression on their faces.

“You’re a trespasser,” one voice behind her said.

She turned around, and looked at the boy’s face. He had red hair, and a sneer. He was a head shorter than her.

“Just trespassing,” she said. “I’m not here to join your gang.”

“Every trespasser needs to pay a fee,” another child said.

The voices seemed to be coming around her, and she felt herself surrounded. She grabbed her knapsack and held it to her chest, just like moogle. “Just trespassing. Let me through.”

“What’s in that bag you’re carrying?”

“That’s mine,” she said.

“Leave the bag, and the plushie. Then we’ll let you through.”

Moogle girl stuck out her tongue, and raised her middle finger. “You’re not going to get either, I’m trespassing.”

“You need to pay toll!”

“Leave me alone!” Megara said.

“Stones!” someone yelled.

Suddenly all of the children started throwing stones. At first it seemed a pity, but then it began to hurt. Megara lift her hands to protect her face. The stones cut her arms, hit her body, and came from all sides. She used her hands and items to cover her face and walked blindly forward.

The redhaired boy grabbed her shoulder. He tripped her.

Megara stumbled forward, but stayed upright. “Leave me alone!” she said, and shoved him off. Her shove had more power than she had expected. She felt proud. The feeling of accomplishment was the same as in the video room.

The boy fell back and skidded over the road until he hit a broken-down car. “Ow!” he said, first surprised. Then he grabbed his head, and began to cry. “Ow!” he said. “…it hurts!” Tears streamed over his red face. He sobbed.

None of the other children threw any more rocks.

Megara looked at the ginger boy, and then quickly walked away. A pang of guilt popped in her tummy and suddenly she felt hollow. She didn’t mean to shove him that hard!

The Science Department had provided her with power, shelter, food, and Rejoy, but also with constant fear. It was better to walk the streets and to surrounded by gangs and Reapers and people who ignored you, than to be locked up in the ultra-clean corridors. At least, that’s what she had told herself on the way here. But now she started to doubt herself. She hadn’t meant to hurt that ginger boy so bad, he just… shouldn’t have touched her.

Megara ran over the pavement and left the gang behind her as they took care of their hurt member. He was younger than her. She shouldn’t have attacked another child. She shouldn’t have to attack other children. They shouldn’t have to form gangs to ambush her and steal her food! She shouldn’t have to share her reserves! Why wasn’t anyone taking care of them! Why was she alone! It was so unfair!

_Stupid Platefall!_

_Stupid Shin-Ra!_

Two-Guns jacket bounced against her back. She had enough candy for a few days, a week if she stretched it. She had coins in her pockets. So she could buy drinks. If she stayed in the Mako Reactor #2, she would have shelter and Rejoy, too. From there on it would be best to figure out what to do next.

The gang followed her.

Megara looked over her shoulder and saw worried faces among the debris.

They did nothing, just watched, so it was fine. Megara shrugged. As long as she got to Reactor #2, she would be alright. She would drink Rejoy, and then protect the reactor when Shin-Ra would come to get Rejoy too.

Chris, the oversized Dualhorn that guarded the entrance to the staircase of the reactor, was chewing on an old parasol when she approached. He looked at her, sniffed indignantly, and then with the most lackluster gleam in his eyes, snapped his jaws at her. It looked impressive  because he was so big, but he did it in such a bored and slow manner, she could not be impressed. She tapped his upper lip to stop him, and walked past the beast to the large staircase.

She glanced over her shoulder. The children from the gang had worried expressions on their face, and their eyes were big as saucers. They wouldn’t leave her alone, eh? Megara wondered if they would dare to venture past Chris. Probably not. Chris would stop anyone from entering the reactor… everyone but Turks. And she was here to take care of Turks seeking Red Mako. That was her new purpose in her quest.

Megara hid in the reactor for a day. She sat inside the reactor, beside the door at the top of the staircase. By the light coming from the strip under the door, she counted her coins and candies. She structured them according to size, and then to weight. She built towers and then castles. She liked the feeling of money against her fingertips. She named the construction of candy and coins the Moogle Castle and she crowned herself princess. She fell asleep into a nap.

That same evening, after her nap, she went deep into the reactor to get Rejoy. Her eyes glowed so much that she could see in the dark. Because Two-Guns had unlocked the main door to the heart of the reactor, she didn’t need to take a big detour any more. It was easy to get there, but difficult to BE at the heart of the reactor. She ran her hands over the bulletholes in the metal where he had shot at her, and pulled a lever that poured red mako into a barrel. She left the barrel open, and breathed in the fumes of Rejoy.

The familiar rush entered her body through the nose, curled in her lungs, and made her burst with energy. She sat down beside the barrel, and inhaled a good few times.

She had Rejoy. She had Rejoy. Rejoice, she re-discovered joy. Rejoy, Rejoy, Rejoy - she did not know of a better feeling in the world.

She giggled, and then she laughed hard. She laughed till she cried and couldn’t stop. Tears streamed down her face and she buried her nose in Two-Guns jacket. She talked to him but he didn’t talk back.

The chorus of Red Lifestream voices were nowhere to be heard, and yet she listened for them. She only heard herself laugh. She breathed in deeply again, and reached up to the lever. She stopped the fumes.

She sat in the cloud of Rejoy. And as always with Rejoy, she was both detached from her body and hyperaware of her surroundings. She could see everything in such clear and sharp detail that it was fascinating. She smelled everything, metal, Rejoy, frogoir-monsters, the lingering scent of herself. She smelled the candy from her Moogle castle, and the current of fresh air when she heard the door opened. She heard children whisper - or were those the voices in the Red Lifestream?

She sat up, and was taken aback with dizziness. She stumbled, felt bad. She felt nauseous. She tried to throw up, but there was no food in her tummy. She just left a trail of wet drips on the floor.

_Moogle! They can’t steal my Moogle!_

She crossed the space between the Mako and the big doors, and then dragged herself up the stairs. The Rejoy was messing with her, and as a result she arrived at the entrance doors of the reactor when tiny feet had already ran down the stairs. At the place of her coins and candy and moogle, were only a few stones. The kids had emptied their pockets full of stones to make room for their new treasures.

“Oh no!”

Megara yanked the door open, and she raced down the steps. At the bottom of the stairs lay a very sleepy Dualhorn. There was a heap of sand on him, and dust coated every part of his body. There had been a sandstorm during Megara’s nap.

“Chris!” Megara said. “Chris, you were supposed to protect the entrance!” She thundered down the stairs and grabbed the railing, but even the railing of the metal reactor stairs had a film of sandgrains. Living in the desert sucked: she dusted off her hands.

The beast shook his head as if he’d been just woken up. He let out a long wine.

“You should’ve protected my moogle! You were castle guard!”

Chris farted.

“Ugh!” She clasped a hand over her nose, and ran down the many steps. The gas of the fart made her skin itch, and her eyes prick - she absolutely shouldn’t smell it.

She looked for the thieves, but they had scattered.

Chris turned his head back, and stuck his snout in the green clouds. He sniffed, then let out a long whine.

“Yes, you stink!” Megara snapped at him.

He whined again.

She made a gesture to her surroundings. “Where did they go?”

Chris whined and let himself fall down on the ground, crushing half of a car.

She ditched him, and ran around, trying to find the group back. They were not at the place they had ambushed her. She ran, and ran. The horizon coloured red and then orange. There was a van on the road, but the sliding door was open so she couldn’t read the name apart from the first half and last half: PLAN-ING, it said. Should she approach them? She had no choice, maybe these people knew more information. Two of them were loitering nearby. A third was on the phone.

“Hello,” she said as she approached the nearest person. It was a woman with black hair and a sweet smile. Megara didn’t look at her, instead she looked around.

She smiled. “Hey little girl.”

“Hello,” Megara said again, and immediately felt stupid for saying hello twice. She glanced around. “Have you seen children? A teenage girl with yellow hair, a boy with red hair, a wutaiian kid with a scowl on his face? Or any other kids? They stole my candy and my moogle plushie and my money!”

“Oh dear,” the woman said. “That is very bad,”

“Yes!” Megara said.

“We’ll help you look for them,” the woman said. “We have a van. Would you like to wait in there? It will be warmer.”

“Come on, Clive, we’re done for the day,” the guy on the phone said.

The woman looked over her shoulder. “Let me finish this! Just one.”

“One what?” Megara asked.

“One person,” the woman said. “We’re all about trafficking people to places they fit better, in order to save the Planet.”

Megara’s face lit up: “Oh I want to fix the planet, too! I’m looking for Sephiroth, so I can ask him to help me to attack the Shinra Company. How will you do it?”

The woman looked at her, and laughed lightly. “That’s a good plan. We collect slum children. We going to take them to a pretty mansion outside the city so they can live and go to school there.”

That made her take a step back, high alert. Megara narrowed her eyes. “Are you… Reapers?”

“Yes. But we’re the good guys.”

Megara narrowed her eyes, because Two-Guns could have assured her the same. She then asked: “Do you want me to go with you?”

“I want it, but it’s entirely up to you.”

“Will we have to work in a brothel? Or a factory?”

“Oh no, you’re much too young to work in a brothel! No, your life will be beautiful. We will find you a family and everything.”

“I don’t believe you,” Megara said.

The lady shrugged, and she stood up. “In case you change your mind: we’ll be back soon. We drive around every day.”

Megara nodded.

“You said your plushie was stolen, right?” the woman said. “I think I saw a child in the van that had a plushie. How about we have a look together?”

That sounded good. As long as she didn’t enter the van, then she didn’t have to come along. She could search for her Moogle everywhere else. Megara and the lady walked to the white van. The sliding door was open, and children were inside. All of them were slumkids of her age: some were younger, some older. A almost-teenage boy was pretending to call his friend on a wooden phone he had made to amuse his little brother. The tiny brother laughed and kicked his legs. Another child, toddler, squatted on the floor and gnawed on her fist, observing the pair. She was changing teeth: that meant she was too young to have experienced Platefall. She was probably a recently abandoned child.

Megara didn’t blame the group for wanting a family. She was tempted to get inside herself. Getting a family, a real family… that sounded good. And if these people were not affiliated with Shin-Ra, then that was a good reason to trust them!

When the lady appeared beside Megara, all children quickly took their places on wooden benches along the walls of the van.

“That one! The Moogle is mine!” Megara pointed. It was hers, it really was. It had the scrunched-up nose because Hojo had glued the new nose on wrong.

“No. It’s mine,” the Wuataiian boy said. He grabbed it tighter.

“It’s got a black nose. It’s mine!”

“Clive, time’s up,” the other adult said. He was no longer on the phone.

“Go get it,” the lady said. She grabbed the back of Megara’s thigh and lift her up, then threw her into the van.

“Ouf!”

The Reaper-lady then quickly slid the doors close. Suddenly it was mostly dark in the back of the van.

Megara turned around and yelled: “Hey!”

The lady pulled the front door of the car open, and took the passenger’s seat.

Megara went to the front of the van, but windows separated the front and the back of the vehicle.“Hey! Let me out!”

“When’s that!” Megara said. THis was outrageous! Kidnappings seemed stupidly recurrent, why did she continue to fall for this? Why did everyone want to take her to different places?!

The first time she had been picked up by Reaper Two-Guns, then when she’d been at the back of Cloud’s motorcycle he had suddenly gone off in a different direction, and the third time Turks had stolen her from Dr. Sun’s house. And now this!

“Let me out!” Megara yelled again.

The car went through a bend in the road, and she was thrown to the side. Her shoulder blade hit one of the low benches and she looked at the other kids.

They were all staring at her.

“Your eyes…” one of them said.

“Calm down,” the lady said over her shoulder. “It’s the sandstorm. That’s why we’re driving. Get your teddy bear, we will let you off at the next stop.”

“It’s not a teddy bear, it’s a moogle,” Megara scoffed. She turned around though, and made her way to the back of the van, and the Wutaiian boy held the moogle tight to his chest. She saw he had been crying.

“Give it to me,” she ordered. Then, because he looked so scared: “Please.”

He almost didn’t dare to look her in the eyes, but did give her the plushie.

“You’re part of the gang, right? Where’s my candy?” She asked as she put the moogle in the cup of her arm. “Where’s my coins?”

He shrugged and then he started to cry again.

“You’re wasting your water,” she muttered, but felt bad regardless. Now everyone was looking at her as if she was the bad guy, and she made her way back to the front of the van, to the drivers. She sat down, and for a few minutes she said nothing. Then she turned to the Reapers. She tapped the glass. “Hey,” she said. “Hey…”

The black-haired reaper lady turned around. “What?”

Even though there was glass in between them, Megara could hear her well. She shifted, and then said: “Thank you.” She spoke softly. “And you’re Reapers from Shinra, right?”

“Yes,” the lady said again.

“I… I’m sorry for what happened to Two-Guns.”

The driver looked at Clive. “Who?”

“Two-Guns.”

The driver looked back at the road, and then to his companion again. “What guns? Clive? Guns?”

Clive smiled. “Sweetie, I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

MG stared at the both of them, and her eyes filled with questions. If they are with Shin-Ra, how do they not know Two-Guns? She frowned. “You know… Cissnei’s friend?”

The driver and Clive exchanged glances.

Clive shook her head.

The driver said: “Oh yes, Cissnei. Yes. He is a nice lad.”

 _He? That’s wrong. Cissnei’s a girl!,_ Megara thought. And then she stared at him: _He doesn’t know Cissnei at all!_

“I want to be let out,” Moogle Girl said.

“When we get there, sweetie.”

“When we get where?”

“At the house.”

“I don’t believe you! I want out!” Megara yelled. “I want out! Let me out of here!”

Through the front window she saw pink evening light, and that meant that they were driving through the part of sector 7. Oh no, had they already crossed from Sector 2 to Sector 7? _So far already! If I don’t get out now, who knows where they’ll take me!_

“I want out!” Megara said. She she hit her elbow against the glass.

“What?” the driver said, and glanced over his shoulder. “What’s she doing?”

She hit it again, and the glass broke.

Clive yelled: “Stupid child! Sit back!”

Megara stuck her hands through the window and grabbed the safety belt that crossed over the driver’s chest. She pulled it through the window, and it strangled him.

He gurgled. He let go of the steering wheel and grabbed the belt, trying to relieve the pressure on his throat.

“Matthen!” Clive called. She reached to grab the belt too, but the steering wheel was more important. The road was suddenly a lot more bumpier and everyone was tossed around in the car until Clive grabbed the steering wheel and got the car back into the tracks.

“Let me out!” Moogle girl yelled, stretching the last vowel at the top of her lungs.

The driver slammed on the breaks. The car came to a screeching halt.


	21. Chapter 21

Clive threw the passenger’s seat door open, and jumped out. She opened the sliding door of the back of the van. “Get lost!”

Megara, who was still strangling the driver with the safety belt, let go and quickly moved to the opened door.

"Wait!” the driver called hoarsely over his shoulder. He pulled the safety belt away from his throat. “How many do we have?”

Clive blocked Megara’s escape way with her arm, and looked over Moogle Girl’s head to count the heads of the children.

“Thirteen!”

“Let her go. The machine can only handle 2 greens per time anyway. We now have an an even number."

 _What does that mean?_ Megara pushed past Clive, her mind spinning. _Twenty greens? Green what? Are they talking about the children being green? The only green about them was their Lifestream. Are they going to put them in a machine? What machine? That doesn't sound like they are taking the kids to a brothel, or a house._

Megara got out, and began to run away. She looked over her shoulder to Clive, who looked after at her with a glare.

The Reaper-woman closed the door of the van, and now Megara could actually read the text: PLAN-ING meant, apparently,

“PLANET HEALING ©”

Megara stared at them as Clive sat down in the front passenger’s seat of the van, and banged the door shut behind her.

How are they going to rebuild the planet? It makes no sense. The planet can only heal with more Green Lifestream. Where are they going to get it from? Megara thought. She walked backwards as the van slowly drove away. It picked up speed.

The machines can only handle 20 greens per time, the man had said.

Megara’s eyes widened.

The other kids are greens! They will be put into a machine and killed because their souls are made of Green Lifestream! That’s what they mean by ‘planet healing!’

The white van drove off, and left a big trail of dust behind.

Moogle girl stared at the van, and her eyes met the eyes of the wutaiian boy at the back of the van. He looked just as sad as before, and a little more scared now. She gripped the Moogle tightly into her arms.

“Oh no,” she said to her toy. “Oh no, we are not going to let them burn. They’re with us now.”

She watched the van disappear around a big pile of debris.

“I’m going to get them back!” she promised. She started running. Maybe if she was fast enough, she could unlock the back door and the other kids could hop out!

The car was was going faster and faster, passing the Sector Seven church in order to get to the on-plate main road.

She ran faster, but after a moment -did they spot her in the rear mirror?- the car sped up more.

She may not be able to get tired any more, but there was no way she could outrun them! Besides, even if she did jump onto the van, she would be no match for an adult. She had learnt that from fighting zackfair.exe earlier today. How was she going to fix this?

The car braked a little, in order to take the bend in the road without throwing the cargo in the back off balance.

The church!

Megara dashed up the stairs, three steps at the time. She grabbed the hinges of the big doors, and pulled the doors open without effort. She dashed inside, hopped over the boulders of broken stones and lunged for the sword.

She tightened her hands around the hilt, and pulled. It didn’t come out, not on the first try. Neither at the second pull. She huffed, and with the third pull it moved. She bit into the arm of her moogle so she could use all her strength, and with the plushie dangling from her mouth, she tried again.

“Come on!” she groaned. She had to save them!

Suddenly the sword got unstuck.

She fell back, the sword above her head.

“Yesss!”

She caught the moogle plushie falling from her mouth, and put the dull side of the sword on her shoulder. It felt like she was carrying a plank for a house, like a construction builder. Time to get out of here!

There was a big gap in the roof and side of the church, which she used to get out.

* * *

 

“What’s that?” Matthen pointed over the steering wheel at something.

Clive was turned around to pick up the shattered glass that had fallen behind the driver’s chair, and collected in a paper cup. She turned around to glance through the front window. “What is that girl doing on the middle of the road?”

“I don’t know. Maybe she wants back in?” Clive asked.

“What is she holding?”

“I can’t see it,” Matten said.

“A sword! She’s holding a fucking sword!” Clive said.

Matten put his foot on the gas. “I’m going to run her over.”

“You’re going to do what?”

“Run the little bitch over,” he said. He gritted his teeth.

The kids in the back of the van started screaming. Some started crying. The oldest yelled ‘no, no!’

The car roared.

“Shut up!” Clive yelled at them. She could see his point, the Moogle Girl had attempted to strangle him. A ‘green’ soul dying now, or it dying later in the machine… if the child would die, it didn’t really matter when it would die, did it? But still, the idea of hitting and running over a child left a bad taste in her mouth. The machine seemed.. cleaner. Less traces, too. But, yeah, she could see his point.

She buckled up, clicking her seat belt in the holder. She threw the cup of broken glass out of the side window. “Fuck! Matthen!” He needed to go faster!

The girl remained in the middle of the narrow road.

“Why wasn’t she moving!” Did she think she was invincible just because she had a big sword?

“I don’t know!” Matthen yelled.

The car sped closer and closer to the moogle girl, and right at her.

The Moogle Girl lift the plushe and bit into one of its tiny paws. She gritted her teeth.

There was only two car’s lengths between them, then only one. Clive screamed and grabbed the door. All the children in the back screamed, too. Matthen let out a beastial roar and he kicked the gas pedal against the floor of the car. Then the car roared, too.

The Moogle Girl lift the sword from her shoulder. She put the tip of the sword in the sand, twisted it only a little.

There was only two car’s lengths between them, then only one.

Moogle Girl wrapped her hands around the hilt of the sword and put her shoulder against it.

Collision.

The car hit the sword. The blade slid through the number plate, the bumper, and the slight twisted angle of the blade broke the two halves of the car apart: left and right parted in slow-motion, and the remaining space was broad enough for the Moogle Girl to stand in-between.

Her sword slid through the engine, and the roof of the car.

Clive was still screaming, but didn’t hear herself. She stared at the Moogle Girl as the dashboard was cut in the center, the front window cracked in halves, and the brown-haired girl appeared between Matthen and herself

She, the girl, slowly lift her little face up - her expression had an enraged determination Clive had never seen before. Their eyes met. Clives stared into Moogle Girl’s cat-like red eyes, and then time sped up again.

* * *

 

Megara ducked between the driver’s and the passenger’s chair, and held the blade of the sword above her.

The front wheels of the car lifted off the ground. The velocity of the vehicle gave it enough speed to use the sword as a ramp, and it flew into the air.

.

Moogle Girl ducked deeper, biting her plushie.

The shadow of the car passed over her body while the belly of the car passed over her head. Wind raged past her ears. Everyone inside the vehicle was weightless, screaming. It lasted for a second.

Then the van crashed.

As Megara rose to her feet. Because he shoulder hurt and her knees were weak, she didn’t immediately turn around. She didn’t see the vehicle roll, but she could hear it.

She looked over her shoulder, and there it was on the middle of the road, up-side-down like a dead bug.

For a second nothing happened, and there were only clouds of sand that billowed up from the wreckage.

Megara approached. The first three steps she had a limp, but then her body repaired itself and she could walk normally again. She was free of pain, too. Honestly, she felt fine. She felt good! She felt great!

She ran to the back of the van, and the wutaiian child was pounding his fist against the glass. She yanked open the doors at the back of the van open, and children spilled around her feet. It was a messy heap of tears and crying faces.

“It’s alright,” Megara said. She stuck the sword in the ground. She helped the girl that was changing teeth stand up, and slung an arm around her. “You’re with me now.”   
  
The boy with the wooden toy phone helped up his little brother, and put his arms around him.

The other children helped each other up.

At the front of the car, Clive and Matthen opened the doors and let themselves fall out. The driver said: “Ouf.”

“The car’s busted,” Clive said. “What were you thinking?!”

“How could I’ve known?!” Matthen shouted back. “Shut up. We can’t continue. We’ll have to get rid of the greens and take the train back to Kalm. We’ll fight this out later.”

“Fine. Help me up, my back hurts.”

Megara didn’t hear it. She was helping up the wutaiian boy. Below him, was another person.

“Here, let me help you,” she said, and took his small hand. But instead of a child, she was helping up a person that was considerably bigger. A full-grown man with silver hair and black leather clothes shook children off his form. He kneeled, then looked up. His eyes were green. This could be-?

“You’re Sephiroth’s brother!” Moogle girl said.

“I’m my own person, alright,” he said. Silver hair fell over his eyes. He let her pull him up, and then stood tall amongst the children. “Previous time you were in the church, you met Loz. I’m the middle brother, Kadaj. When you see Yazoo, you’ll know that you’re close to reviving Him.”

“Sephiroth? How! Tell me how!”

Kadaj laughed with a shrug. “You should better collect your materia.”

A gun clicked behind her, and then another gun. Clive and Matthen had gotten out of the car, and were now aiming the barrels at Megara.

“Moogle girl, turn around,” Clive said.

Megara looked down to the materia in her Moogle, Fire and Lightning, and then up to Kadaj, but he had vanished. Had he been a dream, a sign?

“Turn around!” Clive fired the gun.

The bullet zapped past Megara’s face. She saw it move and tracked it with her eyes. Her fist closed around the Lightning materia.

She turned around and shoved the Moogle in the wutaiian boy’s hands. “Look after this.”

She looked up to Clive and Matthen, two Reapers, two bad people.

She decided never to trust adults any more except Sephiroth and his family. Thanks to His messenger, she had her fist tightly around a lightning materia. “I’m protecting everyone here.”

A crackle of electricity ran up her arm.

She looked up into the barrels of the guns, and when they fired the shots, she ducked. She assumed a boxing stance, and then threw out her punch. “LIGHTNING!”

The sphere of materia, tightly pressed against her hand palm, connected to her bloodstream. The rage and Rejoy in her system made her a very powerful conductor for the bolt. A tiny string of lightning grew as it circled around her heart, and grew more as it slung around her wrist like an angry white snake.

Lightning shot from her extended arm. The bolt hit both Clive and Matthen into the chest. They lifted off the ground, and all their limbs shook as the lightning crackled. The bolt stopped, and they fell onto the ground.

Moogle Girl felt bad when the two Reapers lay motionless on the sand road. But when their bodies faded and they became strings of red lifestream, she stabbed the air above her with her fist. “YES! Yiss! I defeated them!”

Nobody moved, and for a moment only Megara cheered.

She jumped around like a frog, and then did a silly dance with a jump at the end. “Yesss!”

The other children looked scared, worried.

“I saved you!” Megara said, and jumped up happily. She skipped to the boy, and took her moogle back. Then she cheered some more. “I did it!”

“You killed people.”

That made her stop. No one was cheering with her.

“They were going to shoot us dead,” the wutaiian boy said. He pointed at the place the pair of Reapers had lain. “I heard them.”

“I saved you!” Megara said, and grabbed the hands of the teenage boy.

“Thank you,” the tooth-changing girl said.

And suddenly everyone was cheering, and happy, and dancing, and the tiniest toddler boy was still munching on his fist but now he was munching happily.

Megara picked up her sword, and slung it onto her shoulder. She almost went through her knees, but then stood strong. She felt cool. She felt powerful, and it was the best feeling ever. She wasn’t useless any more, Sephiroth’s brother had appeared before her to help her out. Sephiroth was the best.

“Where are you going?” the boy with red hair asked.

Megara laughed over her shoulder. “Back to my spot. Someone’s gotta protect the Sector #2 reactor from Shin-... h-hey, why are you all following me?”

The entire group was following her. They looked a little lost.

“We need to go back to Sector 2, too,” the boy with the red hair said.

“Oh, okay,” said Megara. She continued to walk. And all night they walked, and they talked. Because it was night, there were some monsters on their path, but Megara then dashed forward. She slashed with her new sword, and defeated those with no effort.

“Wooow,” the red haired boy said.

“How did you get so strong?”

“Shh!” Something was off. Midgar’s Sector 2 was calm, so it was kind of like going home, but then something was wrong. She was being observed.

A pebble hit the road in front of her.  

Around them was debris stacked as high as houses. At the top of it, stood a group of children. Some were younger, but most were her age or older. Some were even teenagers. They had a mean or playful expression on their faces.

“You’re a trespasser,” one voice of a kid on top of the debris said.

Megara looked at the boy with the red hair, and the wutaiian child. “Looks like you’re back home.”

The wutaiian kid shook his head. “No, I want to stay with you.”

The redhaired boy stuck out a finger. He looked at his friends from his gang, and then he pointed at her. “She’s strong!”

Now everyone was looking at her.

“N-now, wait a minute,” Moogle Girl said, crumbling under the attention. “This isn’t what I-.... I only walked with you to drop you off.”

“She’s got a sword, and earlier we had money, and she had candy,” he said.

“Really?” the boy with the wooden telephone asked.

“I’m staying with her,” the Wutaiian boy said. “She’ll protect us!”

“Hold on,” Moogle girl said, now slightly panicked. This wasn’t what she had intended! An easy drop-off mission was now putting her at the centre of everyone’s stares.

“I wanna stay with you too!” the girl with changing teeth said.

Wooden mobile-phone guy broke into an explanation on how Megara had saved them from certain death. He gestured with his hands. Others interrupted, filled in missing parts on his story.

“No, shush!” Megara said, but they didn’t listen.

“And then the lightning went ZAPPER-THE-ZAP, and the bad guys disappeared!”

“Wooow,” three kids said in chorus.

“I… I don’t believe you!” another kid said. She threw a stone a Megara’s feet.

“It really happened,” Megara said. She took a Fire materia from her moogle, and aimed her fist at the sky. “FIRE!”

And suddenly a big tree of a flame appeared above their heads, and all the kids stared at her in awe. Then she realized, Materia is power. Just like Kadaj had said, you should better collect your materia. If she could teach every of these kids how to use materia, she would have her own private army!

“It really happened,” Megara repeated, breathless. “So if you want my protection and shelter and warmth, you must follow me. You must be prepared to help me. I’m the boss. Then I will teach you how to fight… to beat anything! I’ve already beaten over a hundred, over a thousand monsters!”

“Cool!” a kid said.

Some kids nodded.

“Why do we have to fight?” another asked.

“To defend yourselves-... ” She was talking to a crowd, and she didn’t know where to look, so she just looked at all of them, turning her head to a new face at every word she spoke. “-because this world is rotten. Gaia is dying and no one is going to help us. Everyone hates us. When Reapers get you, you never come back. So we need to fight for ourselves! And eventually, we get back at The Company!”

There was a murmur among them. Defeating Shin-Ra, yes, that sounded good.

“Together we will bring Shin-Ra to their knees,” Moogle Girl said, and her voice gained a lower tone, as if two people were speaking the same words at the same time: “...and we will make them beg for forgiveness.”


	22. Chapter 22

They called her the Moogle Girl, but who was she really? 

They said she had killed Two-Guns of the Turks. They said she had underwent Hojo-esque experiments in the WRO science department and  _ escaped _ . They said that she could kill a Behemoth in under 30 seconds. They said she drank and breathed Red Lifestream mako without ever getting lost in mako dazes. They said her eyes looked like a snake’s, but were red as blood. 

Were these exaggerations?

They said,  _ Kunsel, find out what she’s up to now.  _

“Yes, sir.” He said and clicked the name Rufus Shinra away from the screen on his mobile phone. He closed it, and jammed it deep into his pocket. 

He was on his way from Junon to Edge, and the train shook as it went uphill. The Midgar railways were still intact, and provided a good view on the forgotten glory. He always felt a little nostalgic when the train crossed the Sector stations. He re-imagined the millionaire black stations with shimmery trains, and envisioned how thousands of employees and visitors had embarked and disembarked this very train to go to work. Ah, that was only a few years ago, and now it was all rubble as the train sped over the railway. Did the Moogle Girl really live among all this concrete rubble?

“Ladies and Gentlemen, this is the train to: Edge. We are arriving at: Edge, Sector: 3, this is station: 4. Please take all your belongings with you.”

Then he reached for his helmet. It was about time he would acquire some information about the girl himself. As an information broker, he’d been informed, of course, but there was nothing quite like the real deal. 

Going out into the field made him happy. The outer suburbs of Edge were more dangerous because of the growing monster population, but he managed to find his way with only a few encounters. He wasn’t like Sephiroth, who could make monsters back off just by staring them down, but Kunsel could take care of himself. 

He got all the Shin-Ra mako reactor codes so he could sneak in by the back door, climb up some ladders, and lean on the balcony unseen. There was a group of about fifty kids collected below, at the platform near the swirling Mako. He had never seen mako like that - it was red. Was this the red lifestream that Tseng had ascribed to Sephiroth? Funny how it looked more pink and sparkly than actually red. 

The children below mostly breathed in the mako. Some of the older ones took sips of real red mako (Rejoy) from the tin screw-on lids from jars. But there were no jars, just the lids. How hygenic was that? Oh well, a little more life in the lifestream that they were drinking wasn’t bad. It wasn’t like you could get sick while on a mako high. 

Where was this legendary Moogle Girl? 

He scanned the faces, looking for a doll. The plush was on the floor. So the figure next to it, the girl with pigtails, must be her. The rumours were true, she did wear Two-Guns jacket, so she had killed him indeed. 

But when she got up to kneel in front of the next child, Kunsel felt a pang of discomfort in his tummy. Why hadn’t anyone warned him for how  _ young _ she was? 

Moogle Girl let only one child drink Rejoy at the time. Then she would kneel between their legs, and press her hands on their temples, and softly talk to them. 

“Ask for him,” she said. “Ask for Sephiroth. Listen to my voice, not to the song. I’m here and Sephiroth is out here.”

“Sephi…. roth…” the other child, a girl, replied. 

“That’s good, there you go,” Moogle Girl smiled. “Keep listening to me.”

“Ughhh…Must… find… Sephiroth…”

She rubbed her tiny hands over the girl’s round cheeks. They smiled together. 

Ok, that was enough for today. His head was starting to hurt. Time to leave. Kunsel took a step backwards, and the sound alerted her. She seemed the only person below that wasn’t in a daze. She lift her head, searched for him with her eyes. 

_ So it is true. Her eyes are red.  _

They were more pink than red, but there was no missing the distinctive mako glow. 

_ Boy, nowadays people are afraid of the blue glow of my eyes… But hers… I won’t  be surprised if she will send them running.   _

He retreated into the shadows, and left. Had they sent a turk, she would have heard him, but an ex-Turk-turned-ex-SOLDIER-turned-ex-husband-turned-information-broker knew the subtleties of how to move in a way that blended with the rest of the world. The metal was damn cold on his bare feet though. 

The outside had some problems, though. For one, he had to make sure to stay hidden from children because he was a good two heads taller than even the tallest child. Even if Kunsel were to crouch, he still looked like a tank. 

The next couple of days, he followed Megara around. She had divided the children into groups, and visited each group. In the night she went to the monster hunters whom - contrary to what Kunsel had expected- did not defeat monsters. They woke up a sleeping monster, tricked it into isolating itself, and then all jumped at it with their metal poles and wooden bats. 

Megara stayed at the sidelines, with the sword ready, should anything happen to the monster hunter group. 

They beat it down until it was knocked out, and then the second group appeared: Those children rolled the monster on a big sled, and together they dragged it to the urban parts of the city. On the way back, they turned garbage bins upside-down to find leftovers. 

So  _ that’s _ why there’d been more monsters in the suburbs of Edge lately! But why did the kids relocate them?

Kunsel observed the creatures until sunrise, and as soon as they woke up, they scattered into the maze of narrow streets of edge. They went on a rampage ranging from attacking cars, running down pedestrians, shooting needles at anyone on the street, searched for food in the upside-down garbage bins in a quest for food (but they were late to that party), and going even as far as attacking pets and people on the streets to defend their ‘new territory’.

Kunsel put his phone to his ear. “Hey Reeve.”

“Anything to report?” the leading figure of the WRO asked.

“Still looking for Marshmallow and Spot. What can you tell me about the pest control in the suburbs?” Kunsel asked. 

“Entrepreneur pest control services have been set up. They been notified.” Reeve said. 

“Notified?” 

“The members of the Board want to give the new businesses a little time to expand. If the WRO services jump in immediately, those small start-up businesses will vanish.” Reeve sounded like he had other priorities than small starting businesses. 

Kunsel hummed. 

Reeve Tuesti said: “I might send WRO forces in, but right now they are needed elsewhere. Have you tried shashimi or salmon? For Spot?”

“Great idea! I will see where I can buy some cat food!” Kunsel said in his most Zack-like enthusiastic tone, and then hung up. He closed his eyes and sighed. 

_ What are these kids up to? _

Just as Kunsel put his phone away, two children walked  straight towards him. They stopped before his feet. The older one asked: “Hello sir, pardon me, do you happen to live around here?” 

Kunsel looked down. The wutaiian boy had a pink hue over his eyes, and the blonde girl was sucking her thumb - but still had the same eyes. Still, someone should tell her to stop sucking her thumb or else her teeth would deform.

“Eh, me?” Kunsel asked. 

The children looked at him expectantly.

“ _ Yes.  _ Yes, of course I live here!” He crouched down, so he would be at the same height as them. “How can I help you?”

The boy and girl looked at each other, and they talked very slowly, articulating every word clearly, as if reciting something they had learnt by head. The boy looked very shy and very concentrated. “There have been a lot of monsters in the streets lately. My friends and I can make this neighbourhood safe again. We’re from the slums and-- and…” He looked lost for words.    
  
“And?” Kunsel asked, his voice soft. He added a smile, but it only seemed to distress the child more. 

The little girl on his hand helped, though she looked positively even shyer. She took her thumb out of her mouth and whispered in his ear: “And we know how-”

The wutaiian boy picked up: “-how know how to fight monsters! We’ll protect your house!”

“Materia,” whispered the girl.

“But we’ll need materia!” said the boy. “Or we won’t be able to get strong. So when we ring your doorbell tomorrow, be sure to give us Materia, ok? No marbles!”

The next day the children rang the doorbells of houses, and the people -perhaps out of pity, perhaps out of curiosity- gave them low-level materia. It’s amazing what the little gang did with it. Under Moogle Girl’s rule, they used the materia to train. When one squad was tired, the next squad would take the materia. They leveled it so high that even the smallest child could do an attack with it. 

Then for three days, the children set monsters to roam the streets. The monsters went rampage, but in front of every house that had paid them, there was a child that kept the monster away. At the first day there was joking, the second day there were less jokes, the third day there was talking, and the fourth day there were complaints from the neighbours “Oi! Kid, yes, you! You can chase that monster away with a zap, right? Chase him away from my door, I need to go to work!”

A month after the first time Kunsel had seen them drag monsters and take meals from trashcans, the entire neighbourhood was paying Materia. The materia-collection seemed to go well, but the children looked less happy, docile, and their collar bones were starting to protrude through their thin T-shirts. Mako… Rejoy, as Kunsel remembered, made you feel as if you had all the power…. but it made you forget the most basic human functions - such as eating, sleeping, and serenity. How far down the path was the Moogle Girl? Was she still a child?

The Moogle Girl had apparently noticed this too, because she had been walking around the food district a lot, and talked to charity workers, but when Kunsel asked the employees after her, they all said they had no idea how to feed seventy-five hungry mouths. 

And one day, the Moogle Girl collected everyone, and said: “I have decided. It will be the 4 o’clock morning train.”


	23. Chapter 23

At too-early-go-away o’clock in the morning, a girl woke Megara up with a hand on her elbow. The light shake was enough. “Turn on the lights,” she muttered, and then suddenly there was blazing, bright light. Everyone groaned, herself included.

“Okay, let’s get up,” she said. She sat up.

Little reaction.

She stood up. “Let’s get breakfast,” she said, and that magic word seemed to work. Team 1 was up first, mostly because they would have a Rejoy drink before they would leave.

“Team 2, Defence group, have a drink too,” she decided last minute.

That caused some smiles on faces, but they did depart late.

Two children -she knew their faces but not their names, she should really learn their names- asked for more, but it wasn’t their turn, so she said “No.”

“Oh please, oh please,” they tried.

Megara shook her head. “You’re needed at the back of the group. Food is important too.”

Megara walked at the head of the group as they moved to the station. The overhead Plate made the world pitch black, as if she was holding her eyes closed, but her eyes were open, and she could see the ground in front of her, and if she looked over her shoulder, then she could see the many pairs of red eyes behind her.

The children followed her silently. Everyone was tired but Team 1 and Team 2. The defence team had surrounded the group and were keeping an eye out for monsters. There weren’t many creatures around nowadays (most from this region were in Edge), but having a toddler in the midst of their group always made the monsters zealous.

Someone blasted a thunderbolt. The buildings around them lit up.

Megara yawned. With the defence force, she could afford to slack off.

“They say that if you yawn without a hand in front of your mouth,” a voice suddenly said beside her. “...then a demon could slip into your mouth and steal your soul.”

Megara looked to her right. The sword was in the way. She switched it to her other shoulder, and there was the wutaiian boy. “Says who,” she said.

“My parents,” he said.

She yawned again. Her whole face stretched from top to bottom, and it felt like someone was indeed pulling her jaw down with a hand, and her hair back with another hand.  She quickly covered her open mouth with a hand. “Whatscha name?”

“Silke,” he said.

“What team are you on?”

“Team 1.”

She gave him a sleepy smile. “Then I’ll be counting on you.”

The group arrived at the station, and Megara glanced around. “Ok, all transport teams, defence team…  you know everything. Look after each other.”

They kept looking at her.

She balled her fist. “See you soon!”

“See you soon!” echoed everyone.

“Bye,” echoed the other group.

The sleds and carriages were ready. She climbed on one, and then jumped on the steel beams that lay over the track. Her weight made it groan. The ten hand-picked children jumped at other beams, in zig-zag pattern. She saw that no one was on the train track.

Silke took the bar behind her. With his long black hair, he almost vanished against the shadows. He locked his feet together at the ankles. He was her age. Roughly. Whom had he lost?

Suddenly he looked back at her, and his red eyes were mysterious and radiant. She thought they were pretty, like gems.

They looked at each other for a while. She on her beam, him on his. They grew cold.

The sound of the approaching train made her remember her speech. “Everyone…” she whispered. She scraped her throat. “Everyone, we can do it. When the train is below you, don’t think. Jump forward and grab onto something,” she said. “If you’re scared, don’t do it. But remember, everyone is relying on you.”

The train made a lot of noise as it approached.

“And try not to jump in the gaps between carriages,” she added grimly. “Begin mission! In 3… 2… 1…!”

The 4 o’clock morning train was made of light. It was yellow and bright and roared like a thunderstorm as it approached. A never-stopping, everything-crushing, thunderstorm. Her mind wandered to the place that wondered what would happen if she fell off her beam and onto the track and the train would drive over her. She didn’t want to think about it. And suddenly the Shinra Express 4932 was under her.

Nobody jumped.

So she jumped.

She jumped forward, and her feet grazed the top of the train. She found her equilibrium, and then glanced over her shoulder. Silke was right behind her, as were four - no, five others. That were more daredevils than she had expected. Five people plus her meant six chances to find carriage number 777 and dislocate it. That carriage and the ones behind it were filled with food.

“What carriage is this?” she asked.

Somebody had to lie down and look over the edge. The kids stared at each other, and then one girl went on her knees and laid flat. She looked over the edge. “761.”

“Fifteen carriages. Let’s go!” she said.

The girl that had looked didn’t want to walk on. One boy slipped and had to jump onto a station platform where he stumbled and fell, but he stuck up his hand so he was alright. They were down to four people, which meant, four chances.

She looked at Silke. He nodded.

Fifteen carriages was a long way to go while they were on a time limit. Megara nodded back, and started to move. Walking on the train was difficult, because it shook so much. Running was easier, because then she flew through the air more than having to keep her balance. And the gaps between carriages were easier to cross when she had less time to think what would happen if she’d trip.

She landed. “Carriage five.”

She landed. “Fourteen. Come on, it’s the next one! One more!”

She leapt, and looked down. She saw the gap between train carriages. The ground went by so fast she couldn’t even see the individual stones. Then she landed. “Fifteen!” she cheered. “Moogle SOLDIER Megara on the job!”

“Hmph, and you call yourself _SOLDIER_?” An adult man climbed out of a hatch on the roof of carriage number 777. He closed the hatch. He put his heavy boot on top of it. He could stand confidently on a moving train. 

Who was he? How had he found out about the train raid? He had probably been specifically hired to protect it. Her heart beat faster. The wind howled in her ears. She didn't know him, but from the looks of it, he was WRO. He wore the standard white WRO combat outfit. But instead of a red hat, he wore a helmet. It left the lower half of his face free. But instead of glass for the eyes, the had three red lights. He put a hand on his hip and said: “You tarnish the SOLDIER name!”

Megara raised the sword in her hand. 

The man slowly reached behind him, and from his back he took a traditional Shin-Ra sword. It looked battle-worn, but shimmered still in the lights of the train. They stood opposite of each other.

“Silke!” she said. “Forget carriage 777, dismantle the one that comes after. While you climb down, I will deal with him.”

Silke said: "Okay!" 

The stranger in front of her smirked. “Oh? Just you and me?”

She put on her brave face. She grabbed the sword tighter. She dashed forward, and aimed to stab him in the tummy.

He lift his sword. He blocked with minimal effort. Sparks flew over her wrist. They were gold, didn't burn. 

They stood nose-to-nose. For a second they pushed against each other’s sword. She tested his power. He pushed right back. She pushed harder and more sparks flew up. She tried to see through the top half of his helmet, but couldn’t see his eyes or hair, only his nose and mouth.

He smiled. He angled his own sword a little.

The wind caught her blade. It felt like holding a kite on a windy day. That wasn't good. A hot feeling surged through her tummy. She pushed the metal back. She staggered. Her right foot slipped over the top of the train. A dizzying moment she was afraid she would fall off. She managed. She quickly put her foot near her right before she could slip for real.

“The sword was difficult to balance with the wind, isn’t it?” he said.

“Shut up.”

“Honour is a heavy burden,” he said.

“I said, shut up!” Moogle Girl attacked again. This time, she went for a diagonal hack into his shoulder. He blocked again. She went for a vertical slash, horizontal cut, diagonal, V-shape, A-shape. It was like fighting zackfair.exe all over again, only he was blocking everything.

She tried a horizontal cut. He pushed it away with relative ease, and a smile. A smile! How dare he!

“How about your dreams,” the man said. He blocked with the sword above his head.

Their swords clashed. A shower of sparks rained down on her. They looked like shooting stars. She had to briefly close her eyes.

“If you wanna be a hero, you gotta have dreams,” he said. He slid his faraway-foot in a cresent over the train. With his free hand, he casually tipped her off the train. “What’s your dream?”

She fell.

Fear struck first. She would be ground to pulp! She was weightless in her fall.

Below her, the grew stones of crumbled buildings looked like spikes of death. She imagined breaking her arms, her legs. She might break her neck. They came closer. 

Suddenly the stranger grabbed her. His gloved hand clasped tightly over her sword-hand and sword-handle.

She stopped falling. He kept her almost vertically suspended in the air. If he let go, she would fall.

“Pull me up!"

He said nothing.

The train made a lot of noise. It rattled. 

"Are you Yazoo?” she said. 

He pulled her up.

She had never been happier with someone's help. 

He was strong, and she felt light in his grip.

Her both feet touched the top of the train. She was safe again.

“I’m Kunsel, SOLDIER 3rd class. I’m here to help you.”

“Done!” Silke called. The front of the train was now loose from the back half of the train, and the two halves split apart fast. “Megara!”

“Come on,” Kunsel said, and jumped on the roof of wagon number 778. “Let’s get breakfast.”

"Wait!" Megara jumped beside him, eying him wearily with those red eyes of hers. "How do I know you're not bad?"

Kunsel suppressed a shiver running down his spine. He laughed it off, blaming the chilly morning air. "Then I wouldn't have pulled up up, huh?"

A child from the group lift a hand. He was holding materia. He shot a lightning bolt to big switch ahead.

The bills in the train tracks shifted. The front of the train went left, while the back end of the train made a U bend back to the slum sector. During the turn, the train lost some of its velocity. It eventually came to a halt.

Team 1 jumped off the train to greet the other team of children that had been waiting there with sleds, wagons, and wheelbarrows to unload the food.

Moogle Girl busted the door lock. When she pulled out the first crate of purple apples, all children cheered.

Kunsel sat down on the roof of the train, one knee pulled up to his chest, the other knee hanging off the edge. He took out his flip phone and aimed the phone-camera at her as the children flocked to her. The screen displayed her smiling face. He took a photo.

The group of kids had grown to twice its size since last week. And with the success, _the promise of meals_ , it would grow even bigger. More children would come. They would relocate more monsters to Edge. They would collect more materia. They would rob more trains, and draw even more children. And then teenagers. And then adults.

Kunsel sent the photo.

She had planned this heist with a frightening precision and perfect timing. The train had stopped exactly where she had wanted the group of children with wheelbarrows to wait. That didn’t sit well with him. A little girl shouldn’t have been able to plan and carry out a robbery as calculated as this. What had they taught her in the science department? Surely it wasn't only fighting. Moogle Girl was still a little girl. How old was she! She carried her plush toy around by a strap on her back!

All rumours about her were true: killed a Turk. Experimented on. Escaped the Science Department. Drank mako without problems. Red eyes with pupils like a snake.

People of Edge that saw her in glimpses on the street said, but didn’t dare to say it. They thought, but didn’t dare to think it. They ignored, and ignored, that she could be the new Sephiroth. 


	24. Chapter 24

At too-early-go-away o’clock in the morning, a girl woke Megara up with a hand on her elbow. The light shake was enough. “Turn on the lights,” she muttered, and then suddenly there was blazing, bright light. Everyone groaned, herself included. 

“Okay, let’s get up,” she said. She sat up. 

Little reaction. 

She stood up. “Let’s get breakfast,” she said, and that magic word seemed to work. Team 1 was up first, mostly because they would have a Rejoy drink before they would leave. 

“Team 2, Defence group, have a drink too,” she decided last minute. 

That caused some smiles on faces, but they did depart late.

Two children -she knew their faces but not their names, she should really learn their names- asked for more, but it wasn’t their turn, so she said “No.”

“Oh please, oh please,” they tried.

Megara shook her head. “You’re needed at the back of the group. Food is important too.” 

Megara walked at the head of the group as they moved to the station. The overhead Plate made the world pitch black, as if she was holding her eyes closed, but her eyes were open, and she could see the ground in front of her, and if she looked over her shoulder, then she could see the many pairs of red eyes behind her. 

The children followed her silently. Everyone was tired but Team 1 and Team 2. The defence team had surrounded the group and were keeping an eye out for monsters. There weren’t many creatures around nowadays (most from this region were in Edge), but having a toddler in the midst of their group always made the monsters zealous. 

Someone blasted a thunderbolt. The buildings around them lit up.

Megara yawned. With the defence force, she could afford to slack off. 

“They say that if you yawn without a hand in front of your mouth,” a voice suddenly said beside her. “...then a demon could slip into your mouth and steal your soul.”

Megara looked to her right. The sword was in the way. She switched it to her other shoulder, and there was the wutaiian boy. “Says who,” she said.

“My parents,” he said. 

She yawned again. Her whole face stretched from top to bottom, and it felt like someone was indeed pulling her jaw down with a hand, and her hair back with another hand.  She quickly covered her open mouth with a hand. “Whatscha name?”

“Silke,” he said. 

“What team are you on?”

“Team 1.”

She gave him a sleepy smile. “Then I’ll be counting on you.”

The group arrived at the station, and Megara glanced around. “Ok, all transport teams, defence team…  you know everything. Look after each other.” 

They kept looking at her. 

She balled her fist. “See you soon!”

“See you soon!” echoed everyone. 

“Bye,” echoed the other group. 

The sleds and carriages were ready. She climbed on one, and then jumped on the steel beams that lay over the track. Her weight made it groan. The ten hand-picked children jumped at other beams, in zig-zag pattern. She saw that no one was on the train track. 

Silke took the bar behind her. With his long black hair, he almost vanished against the shadows. He locked his feet together at the ankles. He was her age. Roughly. Whom had he lost?

Suddenly he looked back at her, and his red eyes were mysterious and radiant. She thought they were pretty, like gems. 

They looked at each other for a while. She on her beam, him on his. They grew cold.

The sound of the approaching train made her remember her speech. “Everyone…” she whispered. She scraped her throat. “Everyone, we can do it. When the train is below you, don’t think. Jump forward and grab onto something,” she said. “If you’re scared, don’t do it. But remember, everyone is relying on you.”

The train made a lot of noise as it approached. 

“And try not to jump in the gaps between carriages,” she added grimly. “Begin mission! In 3… 2… 1…!”

The 4 o’clock morning train was made of light. It was yellow and bright and roared like a thunderstorm as it approached. A never-stopping, everything-crushing, thunderstorm. Her mind wandered to the place that wondered what would happen if she fell off her beam and onto the track and the train would drive over her. She didn’t want to think about it. And suddenly the Shinra Express 4932 was under her. 

Nobody jumped. 

So she jumped. 

She jumped forward, and her feet grazed the top of the train. She found her equilibrium, and then glanced over her shoulder. Silke was right behind her, as were four - no, five others. That were more daredevils than she had expected. Five people plus her meant six chances to find carriage number 777 and dislocate it. That carriage and the ones behind it were filled with food.

“What carriage is this?” she asked. 

Somebody had to lie down and look over the edge. The kids stared at each other, and then one girl went on her knees and laid flat. She looked over the edge. “761.”

“Fifteen carriages. Let’s go!” she said. 

The girl that had looked didn’t want to walk on. One boy slipped and had to jump onto a station platform where he stumbled and fell, but he stuck up his hand so he was alright. They were down to four people, which meant, four chances. 

She looked at Silke. He nodded. 

Fifteen carriages was a long way to go while they were on a time limit. Megara nodded back, and started to move. Walking on the train was difficult, because it shook so much. Running was easier, because then she flew through the air more than having to keep her balance. And the gaps between carriages were easier to cross when she had less time to think what would happen if she’d trip.

She landed. “Carriage five.”

She landed. “Fourteen. Come on, it’s the next one! One more!”

She leapt, and looked down. She saw the gap between train carriages. The ground went by so fast she couldn’t even see the individual stones. Then she landed. “Fifteen!” she cheered. “Moogle SOLDIER Megara on the job!”

“Hmph, and you call yourself  _ SOLDIER _ ?” A man climbed out of a hatch on the roof of carriage number 777. He closed the hatch, and them put a heavy boot on top of it. “You tarnish the SOLDIER name!”

He wore a white WRO combat outfit, but instead of a red hat, he wore a helmet with three red lights at the front but it left the lower half of his face free. 

Megara raised the sword in her hand. 

The man slowly reached behind him, and from his back he took a traditional Shin-Ra sword. It looked worn, but shimmered still in the lights of the train. They stood opposite of each other. 

“Silke!” she said. “Forget carriage 777, dismantle the one that comes after. While you climb down, I will deal with him.”

“Oh?” he said. 

She attacked, letting out a roar as she aimed to stab him in the tummy.

He lift his sword and blocked with minimal effort. Sparks flew over her wrist. They stood nose-to-nose for a second, and pushed against each other’s sword. She tested his power, and he pushed right back. She pushed harder and more sparks flew up. She tried to see through the top half of his helmet, but couldn’t see his eyes or hair, only the lower half of his face. 

He smiled. 

She pulled back, and the wind caught her blade. It pushed the metal back, she staggered. Her right foot slipped over the top of the train, and she quickly put it near her right before she could slip for real. 

“The sword was difficult to balance with the wind, isn’t it?” he said.

“Shut up.”

“Honour is a heavy burden,” he said.

“I said, shut up!” Moogle Girl attacked again. This time, she went for a diagonal hack into his shoulder. He blocked again. She went for a vertical slash, horizontal cut, diagonal, V-shape, A-shape. It was like fighting zackfair.exe all over again, only he was blocking everything. 

She tried a horizontal cut. He pushed it away with relative ease, and a smile. A smile! How dare he!

“How about your dreams,” the man said. He blocked with the sword above his head. Their swords clashed. A golden shower rained down on her.

She had to close her eyes. 

“If you wanna be a hero, you gotta have dreams,” he said. He stepped forward and with a hand, he casually tipped her off the train. “What’s your dream?”

She fell. 

Fear struck first. She needed to kick away from the train or she would be grinded to pulp! 

_ Sephiroth. _

For a moment she was weightless, and then the stranger had grabbed the handle of her sword, and his fingers clasped tightly over hers. She stopped falling. He kept almost vertically suspended in the air. If he let go, she would fall completely. 

“Are you Yazoo?” 

He pulled her up. 

She was safe again. 

“I’m Kunsel, SOLDIER 3rd class. I’m here to help you.”

“Done!” Silke called. The front of the train was now loose from the back half of the train, and the two halves split apart fast. “Moogle!”

“Come on,” Kunsel said, and jumped on the roof of wagon number 778. “Let’s get breakfast.”

Megara jumped beside him, eying him wearily with those red eyes of hers. Kunsel suppressed a shiver running down his spine, and laughed it off, blaming the chilly morning air. 

A child from the group lift a hand and with materia he shot a lightning bolt to big switch ahead. The bills in the train tracks shifted, and the front of the train went left, while the back end of the train made a U bend back to the slum sector. After the bend, the train lost some of its velocity. When it finally came to a halt, Team 1 jumped off the train to greet the children that had been waiting there with sleds, wagons, and wheelbarrows to unload the food. 

When the Moogle Girl busted the door and pulled out the first crate of purple apples, all children cheered. 

Kunsel sat down on the roof of the train, one knee pulled up to his chest, the other knee hanging off the edge. He took out his flip phone and aimed the phone-camera at her as the children flocked at her. The screen displayed her smiling face. He took the photo.

The group of kids had grown to twice its size since last week, and with the success of this breakfast, it would grow even bigger. More children would come. More monsters would be relocated to Edge. They would collect more materia. Rob more trains, summoning even more people. 

Kunsel sent the photo. 

She had planned this heist with a frightening precision and perfect timing. That didn’t sit well with him. A little girl shouldn’t have been able to plan and carry out a robbery as calculated as this. Moogle Girl was still a little girl. How old was she! She carried her plush toy around by a strap on her back! 

All rumours about her were true: killed a Turk. Experimented on. Escaped the Science Department. Drinks mako without problems. Red, snake-like eyes.

People said, but didn’t dare to say it. They thought, but didn’t dare to think it. They ignored, and ignored, that she could be the new Sephiroth. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I need comments. It's been a year since I wrote the last chapter, I need fuel to continue. 
> 
> What is your opinion on Moogle Girl? How does this story make you feel? Do you like my narration? Who's your favourite character? What are your predictions for the storyline? Who you want to see more of? Thoughts?
> 
> Comment!


	25. Chapter 25

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Feathers and Flightless.

“I am Moogleroth!” Moogle Girl roared, and jumped from the roof of the abandoned car.

Kids in the group of children shrieked and scattered into all directions.

She felt like a shark in a school of fish. She chased them. She was by far the fastest runner, so she let them run and sometimes she pretended to stagger so the smallest children could get a chance to dodge away from her outstretched hands too. Then she picked a victim, the redhaired boy she kept forgetting the name of. She grabbed his shoulder. “Tag! Now you’re Sephiroth!”

“I am Jonaroth,” he roared. That was the rule. Then the red-haired ‘Jonaroth’ ran off to chase

other children.

MG was ignored by the other players in the game, because she had just been ‘Sephiroth’. She noticed Kunsel was at the sideline. Why was he smirking?

She ran to him, and hopped the last step. Her landing made gravel spill over his shoes.

He saluted - it looked half a mock, half meant. It was odd, because he was an adult. She didn’t know how she felt about that. She stepped beside him. “They all want to be Sephiroth,” she said. “It’s no training if they don’t run away hard enough!”

“Training? You can hardly call this training. It’s just playing.”

“Playing with superpowers,” MG said. “I think it’s important to get used to them. Before the Reapers come back to try and take them away. That’s why I must train everyone.”

“Reapers?”

“Yes.”

“Who are they?”

She was surprised by his obliviousness. “Reapers are people that snatch children from the street. Sometimes it’s Shin-Ra that promises to take you away to farms and orphanages… but no child has ever returned. So I don’t know what Shin-Ra does with those children. I was reaped myself. Twice! It’s true, honestly. The first time was by the Turk Two-Guns who put me into the Butterfly Inn brothel. The second time was by one of those companies who promised good things but actually wanted to burn us.”

“Burn… you?”

“Yes! They were going to ‘burn’ us in machines so our souls would give the Planet extra Lifestream. They kill us for the planet, instead of fixing the planet. You have to believe me!”

“I do, I do. Seven hells, this is like Fuhito all over again. No wonder you’re mad.”

She didn’t know who or what Fuhito was, but she said, “yeah!”

“It’s good you’re clever.” Kunsel touched the top of her head, and played with one of her pigtails as if she were a cat.

“Meow,” she said. He made her feel young so she indulged in childishness.

He patted her head.

She purred like a cat.

“Instead of that sound of a cat, shouldn’t you make the sound of a moogle?” He took his hand away and scratched his own arm.

“What do moogles sound like?” she asked.

“I don’t know, _kupo._ I thought you would know. You are the one carrying a moogle plush toy.”

Megara shrugged. “I have never _met_ a real Moogle. The televisions in a store once said they all died.”

“Alright. But what’s up with your Moogle? Isn’t the nose supposed to be red?”

“That’s a battle wound,” she decided. She folded her arms protectively around Xander’s Moogle. “Sometimes SOLDIERs get hurt.”

“It’s better if they don’t get hurt in battle at all,” Kunsel said. “I had some really good trainers. Do you want to learn some swordfighting? Real swordfighting?”

“Yes!”

“Ok, go get your sword,” Kunsel said.

Moogle Girl took off running. She made sure the Buster Sword was never far away, so she pulled it from the sand, and then ran back through the crowd to Kunsel.

Kunsel drew two squares in the debris. “In the tiny square we fight. Everyone else has to say outside the edge of the big square.”

 _Everyone else?_ Moogle Girl looked around.

“Everyone stopped playing as soon as you grabbed the Buster sword,” he laughed.

That was true. Everyone was looking. None of the children was playing any more.

“Look somewhere else,” she said to the group. She pointed at one of the kids. “Yino is Sephiroth.”

Yinoroth didn’t even roar.

“Do you have stagefright?” Kunsel teased.

Megara felt her face heat up. She grabbed her sword tighter. “No.”

She had fought numerous times in the science department simulator. She had been observed by Doctor Sun and by all his assistants. She had fought while Tseng had watched her. This crowd shouldn’t make her nervous but it did. This time the audience was her age and younger. She wanted to look good. They were important people.

The thoughts of the science department made her think of ZackFair.exe and how he had almost crushed a moogle. Then she thought of her Moogle, who was strapped to her back. It could get hurt again. “Wait.” She took off the strap with the plush toy. “I don’t want Moogle to get hurt.” She looked around to find a person she knew would handle Moogle well. She saw Silke, and ran to him. “Here. Watch over Moogle for me, OK?”

“Okay,” Silke said, taking her moogle. When he smiled, it made his Wutaiian eyes even smaller.

She looked at him. She almost couldn’t let go of Moogle.

He slowly turned red. Was that because everyone was looking at them?

Her fingers left the Moogle’s plush wings. It was difficult to leave Moogle behind, even for something as important as this. She checked over her shoulder two times before she returned to her place in front of Kunsel, with the sword in her hand.

“Okay, first of all,” he said, and he stepped his feet into the sand a certain way.

She mimicked him.

“Good pose. This way, you can parry the most standard frontal attack. Let me have a go at you. This one. I’ll only hack once. You have to block it like this. And then you have to attack me however you like. I can handle it. Three, two, one…” Kunsel attacked with a diagonal slash that she parried. The friction created sparks all their sword.

She stepped back, and lift her sword for a horizontal stroke.

He blocked it easily, and blocked twice more. “Moogle Girl, you’re a good swordsfighter, but I can tell that you’re autodidact—that means self-taught. I bet you had simulator training and that you probably paused the simulation, and mimicked Zack Fair’s hologram, and played the simulation again.”

She gasped. “How do you know?” She attacked him extra hard with a jab.

“Because I wasn’t taught and hardened by computer programs, but by actual battle. I was in Wutai during the war. I fought along SOLDIERs, and along Zack.”

“Did you fight along Sephiroth?”

“Yes ma’am. I did.”

“Did you-”

“Focus. We’re swordfighting. One lethal habit you do is that after every slash, you stop moving. You fight like a computer program. You stop, and I can _see_ you think. Don’t think.”

“I’m not thinking.” She said this and immediately felt stupid. She attacked again, and it felt like she was only attacking and attacking and that he was not even breaking a sweat in blocking. He was definitely stronger than any person she had ever met. He moved at the same speed as she did.

“Good,” Kunsel said. “Because from now on, I’m going to step on your toes whenever you halt.”

She giggled nervously, and thought it was silly. But she slashed and he blocked and stepped on her foot. She slashed again, and he blocked and stepped on her foot again. She slash-slashed, and it was fine, but then she stopped and he stepped on her foot again. After a while, she had very sore feet.

“I worked for Sephiroth for a long time. I don’t think anyone had a clue what went on in his head when he vanished. Most people say he went crazy...”

“I don’t think he went crazy,” she said.

“You’re not ‘most people’.”

That made her smile. She tried not to step forward too much because her feet hurt.

“I’m going to counterattack.” Kunsel lazily swung sword at her, and that one blow forced her onto both her knees.

She let his sword slide off her blade.

“Yikes. You should have avoided that blow.”

“Yeah.” Her arms hurt.

She could keep sparring because she didn’t get tired, but it was no fun at all because she continued to lose. She glanced around, but saw that the crowd around them had lessened in numbers. Quite some kids from the square around them had gotten bored, and begun to play Sephiroth-tag again.

MG used the opportunity to jam her sword in the sand and rest on it. “Stop. I- … I don’t like this anymore.”

Kunsel didn’t look like he wanted to stop, but he hacked the air beside her. Then he stopped moving, too.

“You’re a good learner,” he said. He wasn’t even panting.

“How come,” she said, “you are… not tired?” She was not tired either, but she hurt. She sat down on the ground and massaged her toes and then her arms. It was weird that someone was as powerful as she was. She took her dose of Rejoy every morning and evening, while Kunsel never had taken Rejoy in his life. “What makes you so powerful?”

The man smiled as if he hadn’t wanted her to ask. “I’m enhanced, and one of my trainers was Sephiroth.”

That got her attention. “Really?”

“It’s true,” he said. He jammed his sword in the sand next to hers. The swords made a nice pair. His industrial sword looked so tiny compared to her big sword.

“Would you like to see him back?” she asked.

“Will you continue to fight?” A child from the crowd of spectators asked.

“No,” MG answered. To Kunsel she said: “Well?”

Kunsel chucked. He leaned in, and said, “I want to meet Sephiroth more than anything. But I want the real one.”

“The real one? Are there fakes ones?”

Around them, most children went away. Only a handful remained to listen in. MG ignored them and Kunsel did too.

“Yeah, a couple of years ago there were some remnants of Sephiroth running around.” Kunsel said.

“Oh! I met them!” Megara said. “They are Kadaj, Yazoo, and Loz.”

Some children around them picked up on those names, and they looked at one another for opinions. The looks on their faces were worried.

“Let’s continue this conversation somewhere else,” he said. “I don’t want to frighten anyone.”

“You’re not going to bring Kadaj back, are you?” a child asked MG.

“No, I don’t think so,” MG said. “It’s Sephiroth who is important to me.” That seemed to put the child at ease.

Kunsel picked up his sword and swung it onto his back, where a magnet clicked onto it. She swung her sword over her shoulder too. “Come. Let’s talk somewhere else they can’t hear. Leader-talk.”

She nodded to Kunsel, and pointed to a pile of sixteen car wrecks. Those were shaped into a pyramid, one over the other. Most of the cars were squashed or had been stacked by the children to make room for their playground. It was a pretty sturdy pile and a good look out over the immediate area. She liked the place she had chosen to talk. As they walked there, she said: "I met them, you know. I met them all before they died."

After they had died, she had only seen Loz appear, and then Yazoo appear. Now she was waiting for Kadaj to appear to her and point her onwards.

"Most slumkids have met them," Kunsel said. He stepped on the first car.

"Yes, and then we got cured," she said. She stepped on the hood of a car and then onto the roof.

Now he turned around, one foot on a brown car, another on the next car that was blue. He looked at her.

"He summoned the storm that brought the curing rain." She climbed past him, to the black car with the broken windows. She was careful to not cut her hands on the glass. She jumped onto the next car. She was halfway first. Mini victory against the opponent who didn’t regard this climb as a race.

"So that's why you and him are so popular," Kunsel said. "He cured you. But what if I told you... that figure you saw in the sky yourself, that's not Sephiroth?"

"It was him," she said.

"No it wasn't."

"It was him. He was all over the news."

"It wasn't the Sephiroth I knew."

"Then you knew a stupid Sephiroth. You're wrong."

"The Sephiroth I knew was kind, and shy, and didn't like attention so much."

She thought that it Kunsel’s description didn’t sound like her hero-god at all. She phrased it carefully: “I don't think you understood it right. I saw the real Sephiroth and he beat Cloud. I saw him in reality, and I saw him on TV." She climbed on the highest car of the car-graveyard-pile and then she brushed the dust of the metal of the car. She didn't want Two-Guns jacket to get dirty. She sat down. The front window was still intact so she could lay her back against it and stretch her legs out. This was a good spot. The best spot. When one of the windshield wipers pricked in her butt, she reached down and snapped it off. She tossed it away.

Kunsel hummed. He took out his phone. “Let me show you a video.” He swiped on the screen. "I would like to believe that the Sephiroth never went crazy, but is still the same as when I knew him. I've got a video of his battle with Cloud, hold on. It shows his face. You have to look at how he smiles... I think he’s up to something, and I want to know what.”

He pushed the phone in her hands. The screen played a video compilation. Some angles were a filmed by shaking hands, others by security cameras. It showed Sephiroth and Cloud fighting in the sky and among buildings. Sephiroth was winning.

Megara had never seen Sephiroth from so close. She had only seen him on pictures or far-away. She bend over until her nose was about an inch from the screen. The video had bad audio. The only sound that played was of the wind as if someone was constantly blowing over a soda can.

"Do you see how he plays with Cloud? Pushing him around? He isn't killing him. If he wanted Cloud dead, then he would have gone for the kill. No, he is doing something else. He's smiling and talking. He is intimidating him. He’s playing with him. The General was like this during the war."

Megara said, "I don't see him smile."

"Three, two, one... there it is. Saw that? A smile. I like to believe that the Sephiroth I once knew, is still in there somewhere. Sephiroth is kind. He is clever--the best strategist that ever was. He knows what he's doing. He’s going to smile again when he knees Cloud in the face—there! Sephiroth would never hurt anyone without order or without cause. I don’t think he is taking orders from anyone. I think he’s up to something, and I want to know what.”

"Trust him. He knows what's right." She had trusted the remnants and they had cured her.

"I'm done with blind trust. I once trusted a General of SOLDIER and that lead to - whatever."

"What?"

"No, fuck it. I'm just through with blind loyalty. Shinra, Sephiroth, Genesis, Zack, WRO, Turks, it's one big mess. I want to know why I should help anyone."

She heard the emotion in his voice. She wanted to look at him, but the video was still playing. She kept her eyes on the screen. She saw how Cloud put so many swords in Sephiroth's body. She saw how he wrapped his wing around himself. He hung still in the sky. Many security cameras had recorded him, and every showed him from a different angle. The moment seemed to stretch on endlessly.

"What does he say to Cloud?" she asked.

Sephiroth's wing fell apart. The feathers scattered in the wind. There was no Sephiroth.

"Wait! Where did he go?" She glanced at Kunsel and back to the screen: "Where did he go?"

He shrugged.

"Is this the part where he was defeated?" she asked.

Kunsel said: "It looks more like a tactical retreat to me. He’s a strategist."

"Play it again!"

She made Kunsel play the video six more times. It was incomprehensible. She didn't understand how he vanished. She didn't understand where he went. Why would he retreat? What had changed? He had been winning the battle. It made no sense.

Kunsel kept looking at her face all the while the video played on repeat. Eventually he asked, "What do you think, Megara? What do you think of Sephiroth? What's going through you?"

She pressed her finger on the screen so the video paused right at the part where Sephiroth was disappearing into a flurry of feathers. She looked at Kunsel's face. He was not smiling anymore. He looked intense. It made her shift on the car seat. With that helmet, she couldn't gauge his reactions. It felt like a test, one like Professor Hojo did in the labs: _what do you think, child?_

She thought carefully about what to say because Kunsel looked so serious. This was important. She could feel it. It was as all their interactions since they had met on the train had lead up to this one question, _What are your thoughts on Sephiroth?_

There was the obvious answer that he wanted to hear, that she thought Sephiroth was great. But it was better to think her own thoughts. He had shown this video to her for a reason. She thought there was more going on here. He expected her to _see_ something that he couldn’t see. She should think up her own reply. She couldn’t fail this question. If her own answer was wrong, she would learn.

"I think... I know how to bring Sephiroth back."

He didn't move. His right hand twitched. It moved up and down in little jerk, as if he would grab his sword.

"Tell me more."

"No."

"Megara, Moogle girl, tell me more. I showed you the video."

"No. You're an adult and I don't trust you."

"I’m not a regular adult, I’m your right-hand advisor. Please?"

"You just said you didn’t give away blind trust. Tell me why I should trust you," she said. "What do you want?"

Kunsel hesitated.

She said: "I want to bring Sephiroth back. He’s saved me from Geostigma and later saved my life again. Now is your turn."

"And you know how to get him back?"

"Yes, I think do. Now I know."

"Moogle Girl, please tell me how to get Sephiroth back."

She smiled. "Say please."

"Please."

"Say pretty please."

"Pretty please."

"Now you have to do a handstand," she smirked.

"Oh Moogle princess Megara! Killer of Turks and Escaper of Laboratories! Leader of the Slumkids, and Chosen Child!"

Megara giggled a little. He was being silly.

"Prettiest and most gorgeous of pleases! Tell me how to resurrect Sephiroth!"

She giggled some more and totally forgot about pressing further on the trust issue. Distracted by the fun, she leaned against him. He was a lot bigger than she was and his arms were as thick as her legs. "Well," she drawled. She leaned her head against his strong shoulder.

He wrapped his arm around her. She liked the attention he was giving her. It encouraged her to talk more and made her feel like she was about to say something really clever.

She pointed at the video. "All this time I’ve been waiting for Kadaj to appear to me and give me a sign. But I don't need to wait for Kadaj to appear to me anymore. He is appearing to me right now. In here.” She pointed at the screen. “I’ve found the sign Kadaj is giving me. Look at Kadaj. The feathers are what transformed Sephiroth back into the weak Kadaj, right?”

Kunsel was quiet, listening intently.

“We find the feathers. The biggest feathers in the world! And when we've collected them, We just wrap them around me. And then I will change into Sephiroth!"

He stared at her.

MG laughed at that reaction. He looked so stunned! She felt so clever. She leaned into his embrace. She looked up to his face. She tried to see his reaction under the helmet, but all she could see was that his mouth was sagged open.

He mouthed, “Oh god," without words.

MG laughed. She held up his phone to watch the video again and show him that yes, she was right.

Playing the video wasn’t needed. He took the phone back immediately. He just pulled it from her hands, how rude. It made her stop laughing

"Sorry. I need to call someone to verify this," Kunsel said. He stood up. He stepped down from this car. And then he stepped onto the next car. Climbed down the wreckage pile. He dialled a number.

“Who are you going to call?” she said.

“Ghostbusters.” He didn’t answer seriously, and she didn’t understand his joke.

Megara watched him go. She thought he hadn't sounded too happy. But she was still feeling excited from Kadaj’s revelation to her. He had given her the answer. With the Sephiroth and his three angels on her side, she was invincible. No one could ruin the plans of her god. All would be well. She couldn’t wait to be Sephiroth.

Kunsel returned. He climbed back up. “Moogle Girl. I thought of something. We should make contact with the SilverElite.”

“Who?”

“They are a group of super fans.”

“How can they help?”

“You said the feathers are important. They know a lot about Sephiroth, arguably more than Shin-Ra does. Perhaps they know about the feathers, too. They went underground after Sephiroth died and the chairwoman of SilverElite sent out a mysterious message. One second. I’ll find it.” He scrolled through his phone. “As soon as it was sent, fans around the world destroyed all data on Sephiroth. Within hours, Shin-Ra had no more information on Sephiroth than the commoner could get access to. It’s some sort of super club. I’ll show you a copy of the message. Look.”

 

[Email]____________________________________________

 **Subject:** The proclamation of silver winds  
**From:** Silver Elite  
**To:** Kunsel  
**Contents:**

Today, we have a message from our chairwoman that we would like to share with our members:

"Sephiroth will never die.  
As long as I live, so will he!  
At least in our minds—but fret not.  
Because I have a plan.  
I shall let you know when it comes to fruition.  
You can look forward to that day."  
\- Chairwoman H.

Her style of writing is rather stiff, but her message is encouraging. See you next time.

[/End email]_______________________________________

 

As Moogle Girl was reading, she felt herself get filled with excitement. Sephiroth would return. Sephiroth would return and even the super fans knew that. She felt herself confirmed.

Kunsel said: “Shin-Ra has been trying to contact them for years to milk their knowledge about Sephiroth. They’ve been hiding. But maybe if they hear about a teenager who wants to revive Sephiroth…”

“...they will share what they know!” she finished for him.

“Yes.”

“But you said I'm a teenager. I'm not a teenager. I’m a child.”

“You’re still a minor. How old are you?” he asked.

“Can I read the message again?”

“You don’t know?” He sat back and laughed. He pulled the phone to his chest to make fun of her. “You don't know how old you are! Do you even know what day it is?”

She shrugged. She leaned against him to reach for his phone. “I don’t care.”

He kept it out of her reach and he laughed. “It is a Tuesday.”

She grabbed his shoulder and pulled herself up a little to reach for his phone and it escaped her grip again. “I said I don’t care.”

He smiled as if she was funny. He said near her ear: “Hormooones.”

“Shush!” she said.

“You’re growing up. Sooner or later your age will become important to you. Or those around you. Boys or girls falling in love with you…”

That prospect didn’t sound appealing at all. She abandoned her quest for the phone. She put her hands on her sides and looked up to him with narrowed eyes. “I don’t want to grow up. I am going to stay the same, forever.” This way her family would always stay close. Their deaths were always recent. She would stay the same, always. "Nothing is ever going to change except for the better."

“Of course, Moogle Girl. Of course. But let's get back to business: do you approve of that plan of finding the SilverElite?” He pocketed his phone.

“Yes. But how do we find them?”

He lift his hands. “You tell me. No one knows who or where they are.”

“That’s stupid. Tell me when you have more ideas. I’m going to get Moogle back from Silke.”

 

It took her three days to come up with a plan on how to contact the SilverElite. She broke her head over it, and she missed precious sleep as she thought about the club of super fans she knew nothing of because they were so obscure. Then at noon, it hit her.

“I’ve got an idea!” Moogle Girl rounded most of the group leaders together. “I have an idea that will be good for us. Let’s capture Maulbeak-monsters from the Midgar sports park and release them in the Edge neighbourhood districts. It must be at night, and at the districts that don’t pay us in materia yet. Then tomorrow morning when the fat families of Edge are scared as usual, we will start collecting protection-money. With the money, we’ll buy paint!”

“What do we need the paint for?” A group leader, the one with the freckles, asked.

Another group leader with a braid said: “We’re already doing a lot of monster-moving. My group won’t like this.”

A group leader girl with the big nose said, “My group can do it. Can we get more Rejoy? We will only do it if we get more Rejoy.”

“Yes!” MG said. “An extra dose of Rejoy for everyone who helps!”

That got their attention. Even Freckles and Braid’s groups suddenly wanted to help.

“What do we need to do the work for?”

“It’s a message. That we are fighting Shinra,” she said. “So more people will help us. Shinra is evil.”

Yes, that was true. That made everyone nod. Even group leader Silke. Shinra was evil.

They got to work under Moogle Girl’s lead. She directed the group leaders, and the leaders told their groups what to do. The Maulbeak-monsters were captured, transported, and set free in a nightly district of Edge. Then the children of Big-Nose-Girl’s group played hero by capturing the monsters and going from door to door and asking for a reward.

The children of that group emptied their pockets for Moogle Girl because if they were fair and honest they got an extra whiff of Rejoy. They took handfuls of coins and paper out of their pockets and put it in Megara’s lap.

This was a lot of money. It made a pile. She scooped it up in the remains of a plastic bag and she and Freckles and Braid went to a store.

“Get out of my store! I have no bread! No bad fruit for you!” The store owner gestured with a finger to the door. Moogle Girl and her guards were not stupid. They weren’t going to ask for food. The shop windows were empty. They knew that Tall Boy’s group had raided a train two nights ago. They walked in confidently.

The store owner said. “No begging! I’ve got nothing for you and nothing for your hundred children pressing their faces against my windows”

“We want paint.” Moogle Girl planted the bag of money on the counter. The coins made noise. “All the paint you have.”

Success.

A little later, Moogle Girl stood in front of a concrete wall. She looked up. It was grey concrete with spots of dirt. She jumped. She pushed her fingers into the wall, and the concrete gave way. She clawed and could now hold on. She kicked the wall, and she made a foot-rest for herself. She stood sturdy. “Throw me a spray paint can!”

Someone threw up a can.

She caught it. She began writing a letter S as big as herself. She climbed to the right side, taking out chunks of concrete as if it was dirt. She wrote: _Silver Elite_.

“Another colour!”

Someone threw her pink. MG dropped the yellow.

_Flightless_

“That’s our name.” Moogle girl said. She jumped down. She stuck the pink under her arm and dusted off her hands.

“Why Flightless?” someone said. “Why not Moogle Girls?”

“Because we’re not all girls you dumbo,” another child answered.

“Moogle, he called me dumbo!”

“No name calling!” She said. “But it was a little dumb.”

“Why not The Moogle Gang?”

“Because I want us to be called _Flightless_. Sephiroth has one wing, and we have none, so we are looking for feathers. SilverElite will understand.”

Everyone thought it was a stupid name, but Moogle Girl had decided and she was unrelenting. For more Rejoy the children would write it on the walls.

The evening news was all about the graffiti and paint on the walls. News presenters wondered what the texts meant. “Who are the Flightless?” they asked each other. “Is this an action by the SilverElite?” All the televisions in all the store windows and all the newspapers showed images of the graffiti. They also showed an image of a wall with a moogle painted on it. The Moogle was without wings.

Moogle Girl learnt quickly that someone from Braid-girl’s group had drawn it. She went to the skyscraper to check the image herself. The moogle looked weird without wings. As she looked up to the skyscraper image, even more people than before turned around to look at her.

That next day was the first time her picture was on television. It was not on television just once, but on every screen of every store window. The photo showed her face from three-quarters while she was looking at something outside the photo-frame.

She didn't know who had taken it. The source said _Shin-Ra_. Was there a tattletale in their group of Flightless? She turned to go back to the Midgar slums, and three people from the adult crowd around her took her picture with their smartphones. When she started running, the people parted to let her through.

One day she wouldn’t be flightless. Soon, she would have a single black wing.

 

COMMENTS APPRECIATED  
  


Lyra has been commenting and because of her, I've written five chapters. Thank you Lyra!


	26. Chapter 26

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bioterrorism

Moogle Girl thought that her raggedy gang of slum children was slowly developing into a real force. For one, they had learned to stay in line. They formed six squares. Beside every big child stood a small child. Except siblings. Siblings stood together always.

“Flightless! Does everyone have their sword?” Kunsel asked.

The children said in chorus: “Yes sir!”

Kunsel stood beside her. They were the officers. The two of them didn’t have to stand in lines. They have commands. She was the general, Kunsel had said, just like Sephiroth had once been. That made her feel good. She didn’t slouch any more. She stood straight. She pretended to be as much as Sephiroth as anyone could be. _Until we find him, we’ll have to make do with me._

“Does everyone have their Materia?” Kunsel asked

“Yes sir!” They raised their fists into the air. Every fist held one or more balls of materia. The light peeked from between their fingers.

Moogle Girl herself had four balls of materia, as many as fitted into the Buster Sword. She had an extra ball hidden into the back of her Moogle, because you could never trust adults. But even adults gave her back her little brother’s moogle toy.

Today the ‘Flightless’ would train with the use of Materia. There would be a morning group, and an evening group, because the reactor needed to be protected at all times. Silke was watching over the other group right now. Silke did everything she asked, and even though he rarely said anything back, it was really nice of him to be so helpful.

Kunsel was explaining the basics of Materia use. She was listening with just one ear, because she already knew parts. She had practised some in the labs with Professor Hojo.

She had wanted everyone to learn how to use magic because it had saved he life. When she’d been in the Mako Reacto #2 the first time, Two-Guns had hunted her down and put his gun against her forehead. If her materia hadn’t been in her possession, and she hadn’t begged for survival by Sephioth’s aid and caused those firestorm, Two-Guns wouldn’t have burned. She would never have survived.

Now everyone of the Flightless lived in that reactor. They had lived there for many months now, and she always slept furthest away from the edge of the platform. She kept thinking back, night after night, at how she should be dead. Some nights she would open her eyes and lift her head. She would look at the L-shaped platform where the Frogoir creatures had died, where Two-Guns had burned.

She felt like she lived on borrowed time: time she had borrowed from her parents because they had died in platefall. Time from Xander because the Geostigma had taken his life. She had tried to save him, really had, but Yazoo and Loz and Kadaj hadn’t found her fast enough. This time she would find Yazoo and then find Sephiroth. This time she would do it right.

She borrowed time from Two-Guns. But saying ‘borrowed’ did not feel right. She had taken it. He had not wanted to die, neither had she, but she had killed him anyway. What was the value of stolen time?

Shin-Ra had been responsable for everyone’s death. If Tseng and duty had not sent Two-Guns after her, then maybe Two-Guns wouldn’t have followed he all the way in the reactor. Maybe he would have let her go. He had been a good person. She had liked him. When she had leaned up to kiss him, he hadn’t kissed back because it hadn’t been right. She had done that kiss for money, not for him. He had known. He had been a good person. Maybe if there hadn’t been pressure involved, and with more time, she would have kissed him eventually. Maybe. She didn’t know. Two-Guns had been a great deal older.

“Are you okay?” Kunsel asked.

The question came so suddenly that she was jolted out of her thoughts. In reflex she blinked and sniffed. She wasn’t crying! She quickly brushed her hands over her eyelashes. She stared at the paths of water on her hands. “Yeah.”

She looked up. Everyone was looking at her.

“Yeah!” She said. “I’m okay. I was just… getting emotional.”

“Do you want to talk about it later?” He asked softly.

Moogle Girl shook her head, but then words bubbled up anyway, and she could not stop them. She said: “Materia saved my life once. Shin-Ra wanted to kill me just like they killed my parents in Platefall. We’re nothing to them. Just… vermin that eats from bins, and lab-rats, and we are… we could _die_ and they wouldn’t even notice!”

Kunsel sucked in his breath.

She didn’t know what she was saying. The words came from somewhere, and they had been locked up for a long time. She usually gave orders and that was it. Other children followed her orders, and it usually worked. She didn’t have to explain herself.

“I hate Shin-Ra. I hate them so much for Platefall, for what they did to the world, for what they continue to do to us by ignoring us. I hate Shin-Ra for what they did to me. But now I’ve got you, and you’ve got me. I don’t want anyone to die. That’s why we put monsters like HornHoofs and RedRats and Lioons in the streets of Edge. People gave us materia. We raided trains and we have food now. We’ve got a home in a reactor. It’s not ideal. I know. I know it’s not like we used to be. But we’re not dead. And it’s going to get better. So practise hard today. Don’t die. I mean, practise hard so you won’t die.”

Everyone was quiet.

Moogle Girl didn’t know what else to say. She felt small and big at the same time. She wanted to be hugged. She wanted everyone to look at her and ignore her at the same time.

The crowd looked expectant.

Kunsel moved. Instead of kneeling down and hugging her, like she wanted, he stepped away. He lift his fist above his head. He shot a pillar of fire upwards. It reached so high it almost hit the roof of the Plate.

“Ooh!” The Flightless children said.

One by one, Flightless raised their hands above their head. No more pillars of fire appeared. The action had drawn away attention, and that was good.

It took half an hour before the first child could do something with a sphere of materia, and it was a small thunderbolt.

From that moment on, the teaching process went fast. The effect was a snowball. Some smaller children -who had thought Kunsel’s fire scary- were okay with trying the tiny zaps. Once everyone was practising hard the air was scorched, the earth had tremors and cracks. Water flushed in the desert. Ice crystallized from empty sky. Wounds were healed with Cure-materia.

Most of the materia the civilians had given the Flightless was low-level, but that didn’t matter. Kunsel said and Moogle Girl knew, that one could always level up.

At noon they sat down for a lunch of a Banora apple and a vial of Rejoy each. The soil was wet and burned and full of cracks. That’s when something odd happened.

A child that was barely no more than a toddler spilled his Rejoy over the apple. Instead of the apple wilting, it deformed. It grew and grew, and suddenly there was an apple tree as tall as the child himself. So he screamed: “Moogle Girl!”

Five voices joined him.

“What now,” she said, and got up.

Midgar was a flying city, the slums had hardly any light. The sums had hardly any water. The desert was hot by day and cold by night. Now something grew, and it marvelled everyone. Shin-Ra’s finest scientists had been trying for years, and now there was a tiny tree.

“Hey! Don’t waste your Rejoy!” Moogle Girl said, but it was no use. Around her, ten of children were pushing the apple cores into the mud and pouring their Rejoy onto it. So she said, “at least eat you apple cores! Plant just the seeds!”

They ignored her.

Moogle Girl said this and said that, but it didn’t help much. Even if one or two kids did what she said, then behind her back, five children did something wrong.

“Once upon a time,” Kunsel said, “people still believed in the Promised Land. It was a land that was most beautiful. There were trees everywhere, and grass, and flowers. The nature gave people many things. People only took as much as they needed, no more. That’s why there were pools of mako everywhere, and slugs as big as skyscrapers, and chocobos as large as a car! Not the chocobos that exist nowadays, those are merely the size of a dog.”

Most kids listened. Not all of them.

“What happens if we plant bread?” one child in the back asked.

“Okay, okay, stop!” Moogle Girl said. “Everyone listen! This is what we’re going to do.”

For once, everyone listened.

“This is what we will do,” she said.

“Eat your apple and drink your Rejoy. Or plant the seeds and spill Rejoy over it, but you won’t get any dose until late. Okay? No more wasting food and Rejoy!”

Kunsel raised his hand. “Can someone go back to the reactor to check the food supplies to see what we have that we could plant?”

MG thought about it.

The Flightless really wanted to plant things. It would make her unpopular is she said no now. And the second the second group of Flightless would no doubt try to plant, too.

“Okay,” she said. “Training is over. Kunsel, go to our food supplies and check what we have. Everyone goes with Kunsel and we change shifts. You get day duty and the other group of Flightless should come train with Materia.”

“But what if they burn the plants!” some child yelled.

Moogle Girl thought on it.

“Ok, I will go scout for a good new training ground and come back here to find Kunsel with the new group. Don’t destroy any trees! We can come back tomorrow to see how they are doing. Well done at training.”

Kunsel saluted, and then said, “Come on!” dashed off to a jogging pace.

That ended their training.

Kunsel rounded up the group while Moogle Girl sat down on the square plate that said BUS STOP: ENTERING MIDGAR SECTOR #2 HIGHWAY. The metal was cold under her bum. Everyone around her left. She watched them go. Kunsel was bigger than most of them. He lead the group like a big mama duck. Or daddy duck.

She couldn’t stay seated. The Rejoy swirled in her tummy. It was hot, and made every part of her tummy hot. She was too full of energy. She got up again. She walked to the nearest tree. She touched the twigs. The twigs were so thin.

Footsteps.

She turned, it was Silke. He was walking back.

“Yes?” she said, thinking he would bring a message.

He didn’t. He shrugged and brushed his hair back. His hair was mid-length and it made him look a little bit like a girl. Doctor Hojo had said that was a cultural thing: men from Wutai didn’t cut their hair after a big loss. They let it grow long. Maybe Silke thought himself a older than the rest of them. He wasn’t much older. He still had a young face. She kind of disliked the idea that he was somewhat older than her. She didn’t know his age.

“Just like us,” he said as he arrived in their forest of tiny trees. He walked to her.

“What?”

“The tree you’re touching. It is tiny and weak. Just like us.”

She stopped touching it. Now she just looked at it. “I’m not weak,” she said. She felt like it wasn’t true. She was pretty weak.

“But despite everything, it exists.” Silke said. “Just like you.”

“Stop sounding wise.”

He shrugged.

“What did you come back for?” she said. “To tell me wise things?” She started walking to the next tree.

Silke followed her. “I’m just here because I want to be with you.”

Megara didn’t know what to say to that. She touched the next tree, and its twigs were even more fragile than the tree before.

Silke touched the tree as well. They stood side by side. When she lowered her hand, his knuckles touched hers. It felt a little bit like an accident, so electric.

She turned to walk to the next tree. He followed.

They stood side by side and looked down on the third tree. That’s when he took her hand. His hand was the same size. His five fingers slid over her skin. It felt like each of those fingers was a separate entity that could decide at any moment to do a different thing. She couldn’t pull her hand away, it felt too strange.

“How many do you think there are?” he asked.

“I don’t know. Many.”

“Should we count them?” he asked.

“I guess.” That would be clever. She started counting them. She couldn’t concentate very much because Silke’s hand was so around her. She could feel how close he was to her. She glanced at him.

He was looking at her.

She quickly looked away. “I lost count. I’m doing it again.” She didn’t know what else to do. Justifying herself, saying what she should do, made her feel better. It at least made her intentions clear about what she thought and should do.

Silke wasn’t communicating back. He wasn’t saying what he was thinking as he looked at he. He just kept looking.

She didn’t really know what to do. She felt like this was as if she was with Two-Guns. It summoned the same insecurity, but this time she didn’t welcome it.

They walked among the tiny trees.

“I wonder when they’ll come back,” she said. She stared off into the distance to the wreckages that lead deeper into the under-plate area. “I hope it’s soon.”

“I hope not.” Silke said softly.

“What did you say?” she turned to him. Big mistake. She instantly saw he was close. Very close.

Silke was toes-to-toes with her. His face was only a feet away. She could see the trees reflect in his black eyes. His black eyes seemed bottomless. Most kids had red eyes by now. His eyes were black. It wasn’t right, it was wrong. When he leaned in, it was wrong too.

Megara leaned back. She put a hand on his chest. She pulled her sweaty hand free.

Silke stopped leaning in.

She took a step back.

“I love you,” he said, and he wanted to take her hand again. She let him.

“Silke,” she said.

“Because you’re the prettiest girl in the world. And you’re not afraid of anything. You’re strong. I want to make you happy because you never laugh.”

“I laugh a lot of times.”

“No,” he said. “You don’t, but I want to make you laugh.” He moved closer again.

She pulled away again. She pulled her hand away, too. She put it in the pockets of Two-Guns’ jackets so Silke couldn’t take it again.

Silke’s shoulders sagged. He began talking about which tree was his, and where he had planted it.

She followed him along to his tree. They pointed at it, and she said, “It’s quite a tiny tree,”

“Where is your tree,” he asked.

“I didn’t plant any. This world is rotten anyway,” she said.

For some reason, that seemed to hurt him.

Together they wandered a little away from their garden. They found a place to train. It was an abandoned roundabout with four roads leading to it. Moogle Girl could climb onto the roundabout and oversee every direction. The roads were cracked. Rubble lay partially on the roads. But the Flightless could push to remove it or smash it. Concrete wasn’t that difficult to smash. They were stronger than stone.

“Stay here,” she said. “I’ll go back to find Kunsel. She left him on the roundabout to clear away some rubble and she went back on a jogging pace.

What was that moment with Silke? What had that been?

She knew of other kids that held hands. She jogged faster. Leaning in for a kiss was daring, she had to give him that. But still, her lips had last touched Two-Guns. She didn’t want to kiss Silke! He was impossible. Just impossible in a never-ever-going-to-happen way.

She jogged faster and then broke into a sprint. Her muscles were like snares. She felt like she was flying horizontally and only casually touching the ground every once in a while. She ran and ran. With the running, she could leave the thoughts of Silke behind.

She didn’t like him back. She hoped she hadn’t hurt his feelings but he was just so… no.

In the distance was a figure, a man with children that followed him. The children carried their swords and spears and pans or whatever they had as their weapons.

“Kunsel!”

She ran to him.

“Everything okay?” he asked.

“Yes! But…” She slowed into a jog. Then she stopped. She wasn’t even panting. Her heart was a drum in her chest, but that hadn’t been from the running.

Kunsel caught up with her. “But?”

She reached up and pulled Kunsel down to her height. He leaned in.“Silke tried to kiss me,” she whispered.

Kunsel snorted.

What a sound! She pushed him. “Don’t laugh!” She glanced at the other kids, didn’t want them to hear it. Despite the romantic intent, she didn’t want them to bully Kunsel.

“Why not? It’s funny.”

“It totally isn’t funny!”

“This is exactly what I said the other day. I’m calling it funny. Can I say it?”

“Say what?”

“I told you so,” he laughed at her. He put an am around her shoulders and pulled her along. They continued on his pace but in her direction. “Hormooones.”

“You knew! Why didn’t you warn me?”

“It wasn’t my secret to tell. Sometime you will encounter people that like you, and then you’ll have to deal with them. Plus, you two would make a cute couple.”

Megara shoved him a little away but didn’t shove him so had that she would escape his embrace. This was the hug she had been waiting for all day since she had first thought of Two-Guns and cried in front of everyone. This was the sort of contact she didn’t mind.

“So what happened?” he asked.

“He grabbed my hand. I didn’t know what to do. He leaned so close to me that I could see the trees in his eyes! That was way too close.”

“Way too close,” Kunsel nodded and he sounded like a teenage girl. That earned him another push, even though those pushes of hers didn’t do much. All he did was smirk.

“His eyes are black,” she said. “That was the weirdest thing of all. Maybe that’s why I don’t like him. They should be red. Don’t you think?”

“Hmm. Would be most logical. Seeing at how much Rejoy you all consume.”

“I want to see you eyes,” she said.

“What, mine?”

“Yes!”

Kunsel took his arm from her shoulders. He pushed her gently, and she didn’t laugh in return like he had. She looked at him. She wanted to see his eyes now.

Kunsel said: “I was in the SOLDIER program. There, something happened to me.”

“So that’s why you don’t take your helmet off?”

“Yeah.”

“But I want to see your face! And you hair.”

“All you need to see is right here.” Kunsel pointed to himself. The only part of his face that was visible under his helmet was his mouth. He smiled wide.

“Oh I _see_ ,” she said. “You’re an idiot.”

“Hey!”

She laughed.

He said: “You keep me around for my helpfullness. Kunsel the Tutorial guy.”

“Silke is helpful too. He does everything I ask.”

“Ooh, so I’m not special, little Moogle General?”

She grinned at him. “Well… what use are you?”

“I'm your right-hand man! Your advisor! I have contacts! Contacts all over the world. As soon as we get into contact with SilverElite and find out where Sephiroth’s big black feathers are located, I can use my information network of friends to get you the feathers fast!”

“Really?”

“I want Sephiroth back just as much as you do,” he said.

They walked to the training ground. Silke was in the distance. He waved.

If she ignored him, it would be awkward. Moogle Girl raised her hand to wave back. In that moment, her knuckles brushed past Kunsel’s. This time she did feel a zap of electricity through her arm. Her knuckles where they had touched felt hot while she was waving.

She remembered Kunsel’s voice near her ear: _hormooones._

How stupid! She stomped Kunsel on the arm.

“Hey!” he said, grabbing his arm to shield it from her. He rubbed the sore spot. “What was that for, General Moogle?”

She didn’t answer. She ran to the group of Flightless waiting for her at the training ground.


	27. Chapter 27

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tifa at Shin-Ra

Today was a good day. To Tifa, it seemed to be one. Though you weren’t ever sure if the day was good, until it was over. But the weather was nice for once, sunny, and a bit colder than usual. It reminded her of the air you encountered when you would climb Mount Nibel and suddenly it would get windy.

She reached up and ran her hand through her hair, and missed her cowboy hat. Maybe she should start wearing hats again. She had hats in the closet but never wore them.

The desert was windy too, as was Edge, but in a more oppressive way. Between the buildings the wind could be as dry as the desert, but as strong as it it was from the sea. Maybe someday she, Cloud, Denzel, and Marlene could go to the mountains. It didn’t have to be far away. It would be a little holiday, just the four of them. Could that keep Cloud rooted for a few days?

He was trying. She had to give him credit. She knew he was. She was a great deal more proud of him than a few years ago, and they were almost feeling like a family.

Maybe she should invite everyone to that holiday. Barret, Nanaki, Cid… even Yuffie and Vincent. That would be good for everyone. It was strange to go through so much together and then vanish from each other’s lives!

She moved her books to the other arm and climbed the steps that lead to a metro station… but decided against it. She looked at the time. She had plenty of time to walk to the rest of the way. She didn’t want to sit in a stuffy carriage. It was sunny!

She turned around and went against the stream of people. _Funny how you never know how many people walk with you, until they’re against you._ She had experienced that first-hand as a rebel.

Now there were no more rebels. Everyone wanted to save the world. She walked past houses. She walked past the bakery, and for once there we no hand-prints on the glass. She had gotten used to seeing slum children hang around in front of the bakery store, but there was no one now. That was a testimony to how good it was going. Shin-Ra and WRO were working together hard to make the world a better place. She had to give them credit.

Maybe, if Rufus Shinra was civil, she would forgive him a little bit more.

She wasn’t very good at forgiveness of the people she didn’t love, but Marlene had asked her to try. Marlene was becoming more and more like Aerith. Maybe that was because Tifa and Barret had told her too many stories about Aerith.

Marlene had at once said she wanted to become Aerith. Now that was something Tifa had very quickly shut down. _You’re your own person,_ she had told the little girl, _with your own life and own hopes and dreams. There’s no point in trying to become someone you’re not._

She walked past the bookstore. She passed a job agency that had a pieces of paper in the window with the text _Materia wanted_. Every letter had its separate piece of paper.

Tifa walked on towards the new Shinra Headquarters. She carried Cloud’s books on Geostigma on her arm. Rufus had asked for those, via Rude. Rude was the only one she could talk to without wanting to punch them.

The more she walked, the more expensive the buildings and stores became. She entertained herself by looking at people, but everyone wore grey clothes. She saw graffiti on the walls, and the word SILVER ELITE made her stopped. She felt cold. She felt like someone was pouring ice over her. Who in the world had the audacity to write that on the wall?

She forced herself to move on. She put a hand over her stomach where Sephiroth had stabbed her, and she walked on. She would take the nearest metro directly to Rufus Shinra’s Den of black devils and demand he would get people to clean that off the walls or paint over it. He had the money. He could pay. And if he wouldn’t, she would break that wall with her own fist and if she’d clean up the damage… she would think of that later.

In the next street she encountered the word FLIGHTLESS written on the walls. It was the same sort of paint, but a different colour. She didn’t like it. She walked on, and saw the city with a more alert gaze. She noticed the next groceries store didn’t have children in front of the window either. When had they stopped coming to beg? There were not even animals in front of the store. She saw the word Flightless pop up four, five times.

There was an electronics store, in the next block. They sold televisions. She could watch the news there. She usually kept up to date with the news and customers talked about the news in the bar, so she should know what was going on. Not knowing… it irked her.

She looked in an alleyway that was known for having outcasts. There were adults enjoying their hangover, half propped-up to the walls. But there were no children. Was that good or not?

She stopped at a store with televisions. There was a re-run of the news, of what Reeve had said about using oil. There was news about the train that would connect two of the continents, and then there was a news item. The presenter narrated from the autocue: “- source of the raided food trains and the city-wide food scarce. This group of ‘flightless’ has been hindering the WRO. The WRO wants to take action, currently illegal since the Flightless seem to be all minors. They have holed themselves up in the Midgar slums. Shin-Ra officials suspect this girl, is the leader of the group.”

On the screen appeared a picture of a girl.

“She has employed a group of children to obstruct officials from approaching her. They are just children. They are not in contact with any suspicious figures, but are thought to have caused the graffiti all over the city. It appears this Anti-SHIN-RA group wants to align themselves with, or get in contact with the SilverElite, which no longer exists. The WRO advises the people of Edge to stay away from the Midgar slums.”

“This girl with the Moogle toy has been seen near the slum’s edges. We don’t know how, but it’s become a zone with plenty of vegetation. People in the area strongly advised to stay away from Midgar due the unstable nature of the plants: they look like Banora apple trees, but the radiation may have deformed them. No one is allowed to go near the plants under the Vegetation Protection law. We call it bioterrorism. Shin-ra and WRO cannot take legal action based on the protective environmental rules. The plants are spotted on strategic entrances to Midgar. We don’t know what causes the red colour, or why the plants can survive. So we called in an expert on unusual life forrms. Welcome, Doctor Sun,”

Tifa saw a wutaiian’s face, and she knew something was wrong about him.

“Doctor Sun, can you tell us more?”

That man gave her the creeps.

A car stopped behind her. She turned around.

Rude got out of the car at the driver’s seat. He walked around it, and said a greeting before opening the car door for her on the passenger’s side.

It struck her as odd and more welcoming than standing here and getting bad thrills. Rude was always a gentleman. She didn’t protest because he was doing his best. She got in.

“You were watching the news,” he said as he got into the car. They drove.

“Yes.”

“It gets worse the more you get to the suburbs. The _have you seen suspicious figures?_ -posters that used to hang everywhere are gone. Ripped off.”

They passed a wall that read, _Sephiroth SAVES,_ in graffiti.

“I can’t believe it,” Tifa said. She bit back her emotions. “Is this real? Did people forget?”

“They’re children,” Rude said.

“So that excuses them? They should know. Geostigma, the healing rain, they should know.”

“The rain is toxic to the Flightless,” Rude said.

“It’s toxic?!” Tifa asked. “How can it be toxic?”

Rude said nothing. He struck the perfect balance between _attentive diver_ and _company secrets._ She -of course- knew which one it was. Shinra and their stupid secrets. It was so full of snakes that she sometimes forgot Rude was one of them. He made her feel so safe. He felt so honest. That was part of his job description, ‘feel like you belong to Avalanche side’. But there were no sides now. Everyone was just trying their best to live a life.

Tifa pressed herself into the car chair. She sighed. She leaned her head against the window and watched world fly by. “Then what am I bringing this for?” She brushed her hands over the stack of notes copied from Cloud’s books.

“We’ll arrive soon.”

They didn’t speak any more. Her breath made fog on the window. She didn’t want to fight any more. She was so tired of fighting everyone, all the time, for the world.

They arrived. Shin-Ra was no longer glittering gold and blue. It was a building that felt smaller. It had narrow hallways that made you feel as if it was a maze. Rude was her guide in the maze, and she was caught in it. After three curved hallways she didn’t know where she’d come from. Shin-Ra’s building was bigger on the inside, and they had to walk a lot. She lost her sense of direction quickly.

Rufus Shinra to build a maze, she thought, since he can’t awe people into submission, he will make them feel confused and lost. There is probably a shortcut somewhere.

The maze worked. She felt even more tired than before. The hallways felt clinical. The light was electric and white, so there were no shadows.

The entered a hospital room. In the hospital bed sat Rufus Shinra, and the sight was odd because either he looked small or the bed vas very big.

“Miss Lockheart,” he said.

The doctor who bandaged Rufus neck, turned around to look. “Ah, miss Lockhart,” he said. He smiled as if they knew each other.

“You. I saw you on television.”

He laughed softly behind his fist. “Yes, I like to appear on screen. Now, Mr. President, thank you for the sample. I see you have another appointment.”

“Thank you. I’ll see you at the board meetings.”

The doctor, nameplate said Dr. Sun, stripped off his plastic hospital gloves. The way of doing that made a chill run down Tifa’s spine. She _knew_ him. She didn’t know from where, and observed him as he packed a white cloth with a smear of geostigma in his case and trashed the gloves. When he passed her, she looked down on him.

Suddenly the doctor stayed still, and looked up to her. They looked at each other’s eyes. His eyes were as red as his.

She wanted to recoil.

He went on, and left the room. She heard him mutter, perfect, perfect, as if she somehow was exactly what he had expected.

“What was that about?” She asked.

“Geostigma,” Rufus said.

“I thought the healing rain helped everyone, even you?”

“Even me?” Rufus smiled. “I don’t think-” and he began to cough.

Rude, who had been near the door, rushed past her. He sat down at the bed and gave him a handkerchief that Rufus pressed against his mouth as he coughed. Rude would make a good father someday.

Rufus stopped his coughing by force, by coughing still but clenching up so tight that the spasms would die down. It was just like how Denzel used to do. The coughing stopped. He waved a hand to Rude.

Rude looked up to Tifa. “Come. Let’s give him a moment. Coffee?”

“Coffee would be wonderful.”

He put a square box with a red button in hand. Rufus initially didn’t grasp it, but Rude persisted. “Coffee then.”

Rufus still coughed with tiny jerks.

Rude and she got up, went to the hallway. They got coffee at a machine. Rude pressed the instructions. Strength 4, Sugar 1, milk 0.

“You know me,” she said, and tried to make it sound like a light-hearted compliment. Her sing-song tone died quickly. “For how long has he been like this?”

“Years.”

“Her rain didn’t heal him?”

“Just enough for him to think himself healthy for a while.”

“Now this…” she said. She took her coffee from the machine. She punched in an order of hot water.

Rude looked.

“Cup-a-soup,” she said. “He looks like a skeleton.”

When they returned, Rufus looked as if nothing in the world was wong. She could tell he had hidden the alarm under the sheets, and the handkerchief too. He had wrapped his fingers together.

She now noticed the statue of Odin in the side of the room, and a massive stuffed toy that was the shape and size of a real Dark Nation. It’s ear and eye were falling off. It was propped against the wall for support, couldn’t keep itself up.

Rufus saw her look. “Someone should sews him up. Elena keeps offering to fix him, but-” He gave a vague hand gesture and smiled.

“But?” She gave him the soup.

“No.”

“Yes.”

“Miss Lock-” He gave in. He held the soup. He didn’t make a motion to sip though. It was probably too hot. “It’s nice to-”

She sighed. “What do you want, Rufus?”

“Seeing the recent developments-” He gestured to a newspaper on his lap that had the date of after tomorrow.

“No. Just answer me. What do you want, Rufus?”

“Can you arrange a conversation with Cloud?”

“Why don’t you ask him yourself?” She knew why they were going through her. But she wasn’t Cloud’s secretary. If Shin-Ra wanted something from him, Rufus should ask him directly.

“You’re the only one whose calls he consistently picks up.”

“Because I don’t do politics with him. He is not your employee.”

Rufus said, “He is not.”

That made her wonder if Rufus wanted to employ Cloud. Would he? If he had the chance, probably. Power is power, right? Sephiroth had also sought power, but Rufus was about the furthest from Sephiroth as anyone could be. The man in front of him was too weak to eat even his soup. She wondered if that frustrated him.

She said nothing.

Rufus said nothing.

“You didn’t want Cloud’s notes at all,” she said. “You’re being consumed by geostigma, but he can’t know more than your scientists. So what’s the goal of this talk? Huh? You don’t care much about the data of geostigma, do you? You just wanted to see me. You want Cloud. What for?”

Silence.

Rufus looked at her.

She looked back, hard.

Rufus gestured to the newspaper. _Read it_ , he meant. “The Moogle Girl is becoming a problem.”

She picked up the newspaper, and there was a picture in full-colour. That was rarely the case nowadays in mass-produced print media. “This girl.”

The news reporter had said they’d only had one picture, but this was a clearer image. She was handing out apples to children. The text below had a mention of Sephioth, and that word had been crossed out by Rufus’ red pen, and another paragraph had a red strikethrough. She looked up. “What is really going on?”

“I wonder myself,” Rufus said. “Rude, let’s assemble the Board.” He knocked over the soup, and the way Rude responded made her wonder if he did that on purpose - regularly.

Rude helped Rufus in a wheelchair. Tifa had hardly ever seen legs of which the thickest part was the knee. Then Rude dropped a blanket over him. And another. He seemed normal now. She knew better.

“Join the Shinra board meeting with me. If you’ve got any questions after that, I’ll answer them.”

The trouble with politics is, that it governs the world. There are two systems, money and power, and you can’t not be involved. You always are, one way or another. Sitting in a bar, making up anti-mako and anti-Shin-ra slogans felt productive. It felt important. Trying to get the word out was hard. Most people choose to live in blissful ignorance. Tifa knew she couldn’t.

 

She entered the Board Meeting room. The real decisions were made here, in this room beside Rufus’s, by people that weren’t elected. These managers were probably careful not to get elected by the people.

This room did its best to hide that it was a hospital room. The bed was gone. Someone had placed drapes here and there over hospital equipment. The big table in the middle had a red sheet over it, and there was a big presentation screen in the back.

Tifa looked at the ceiling and it did not have any ceiling plates that could be removed so people could listen in - like she and AVALANCHE had eavesdropped on the old President Shinra. This ceiling was probably made of concrete.

Rufus made his appearance. Rude wheeled him to the head of the table. Two managers entered the room. She saw Reeve. They made eye contact, and nodded each. Reeve... a stranger and a friend at the same time. He looked surprised to see her there. What surprised her, was that Reeve had the place left of Rufus. Now he looked like as a right-hand man, not like the fairly elected representative of the WRO. Maybe she shouldn’t be surprised. The WRO, after all, had been started-up with money from an ‘anonymous benefactor’. This table seating showed what the relations were really like.

Being all talk and no action meant nothing. She sat down at a chair. That would probably mess up the seating arrangement, but it were just chairs. She was a rebel.

The last people entered the room, they were with… thirteen. The last person to enter was Doctor Sun. “The board meeting, half an hour early.”

“She’s with me,” Rufus said. “May I introduce you, Tifa Lockhart, as representative of Avalanche.”

“Excuse me. I’m not here as representative,” she said. “I’m here as myself. I will represent my own sentiments only.” She shut that down nicely.

“Of course,” Rufus said, perfect mask in place. His hand clenched around the paper. “On the agenda: the materia crisis, food shortage, vegetation, riots, intel and…” he looked at Tifa. “-an opportunity for questions for the audience.”

A woman with brown hair said, “I set the timer.” She put the phone in the middle of the table.

“Thank you, Ilona. I forgot.”

It was a countdown of thirty minutes. What for? The way the board members ignored it as if the timer was a normal occurrence.

“Firstly, the materia crisis. Nsizwa?”

The black manager was playing with a glass sphere as he spoke. “We mapped out Moogle’s materia monopoly. Thinking the children own a lot of materia is a misconception. The owe maybe a third percent of all materia in the world. What’s jarring though, is that they have the only functional materia.”

Tifa sat back in her chair.

“We surveyed various layers of the populace both here in edge and worldwide save Wutai,” he said. “It’s a worldwide phenomenon that materia has been steadily going out, but since we passed the 2.0% mark, it’s increased.”

“Always the two percent,” Rufus smiled, as if it was a personal battle he’d lost.

“Materia death is happening everywhere simultaneously on the planet, except for the regions built on lifestream arteries. Materia continues to function there.”

“Midgar is built on such a vein.” Rufus said.

“That’s the point I was arriving at,” Nsizwa said. “Areas that have a Mako reactor that used to function, register the most rapid materia deaths. I expect that in a month or so, the Flightless will have functional materia monopoly.”

Rufus leaned back. “Is the materia the Flightless use corrupted?”

“Well,” the expert said. “Keep that question in mind. You’re making a point I want to get back to. Normal materia doesn't have enough lifestream to power it. Only the red lifestream works. The green lifestream is just not strong enough.”

“Wait,” Tifa said. She didn’t want to think of the green lifestream dying. She clenched her teeth and did her best not to get too emotional. “There are two lifestreams?”

Doctor Sun moved forward on his chair. “Yes. That’s why you and Valentine have red eyes, and everyone in SOLDIER had green eyes. You were exposed long-term to a different type of mako radiation.”

“ _Moving on_ ,” Nsizwa said, “The populace wants materia. They need it for their battles against monsters, for their shrines, fridges, and odd jobs. This will be a long-term problem with a deep cultural impact.”

Fridges! Tifa thought. Not everyone was as upstanding as she was.

“Now coming back to your question, Mr President. It is wholly possible for Green materia to turn Red under long radiation exposure. I’m especially talking about the Flightless' ownership of summon materia such as Behamut. For now, let’s call red-lifestream powered summon materia SIN. If the flightless get hold of a powerful materia, say, Odin or Knights of the Round, there is no telling to what will happen when they turn it to Odin SIN or Knights SIN. They have almost all their materia turned to SIN already. Only organisms that function with a Red-Lifestream dominant genetic makeup can operate SIN materia.”

“Nsizwa, I don’t pay you enough, do I?”

Nsizwa smiled. “I serve the Planet.”

Rufus said: “Materia death will cause a market crash. People won’t be able to sell it because it’s not powerful, and can’t buy it because they won’t have any money. Thus, implosion. There will be a monster plague.”

He stared at the ceiling. He inhaled, exhaled. _What do we do?_

A board member said, “We should start collecting all the functional materia. Any good stuff that is left. Utilize it in the most strategic way, to protect the people of cities. A monster plague is not what we need. ”

Rufus looked tired. “Time’s ticking. I want to think about the decision of collecting personal materia. Next topic. Which is… food.” He looked at a manager with a big grey beard.

“Food. We’ve already been importing from Mideel, but the bad harvest will be making its impact soon. The Flightless’ raids on the food trains continue steadily. Can you reroute the trains? Put the food in cars? Ships?”

“That will lead to raids in other areas.” Reeve said. “Let them raid the trains in the slums.”

“Can we put more guards on the trains?” the man asked.

Rufus said: “More employees on trains does not work. We tried, and the Flightless overpowered them. Ilona? Sketch.”

The psychologist gave an evaluation: “The children are fearless. They are high on Rejoy. If met with enough resistance, they will push guards off the train. Such acts will make them into child warriors. Killing is only a step away from getting normal for them. Let’s not put them in a place to develop a culture where murder is rewarded instantly with food and glory.”

“We need to get rid of those pests,” the bearded man muttered.

“Yes. We do.”

Rufus said: “Vegetation. How’s the vegetation inspection team?”

Reeve was silent.

Everyone looked at him.

“They’ve been eaten,” Reeve said. “By the plants.”

“Ouch. Embarrassing!” Ilona sang. Then: “Ow, don’t kick me.”

Rufus drummed his hand on the table and then he rubbed the eye that was bandaged. He rubbed his ear too. He was zoning out.

Everyone waited patiently.

Rufus said: “Materia death, market crash, monster plague, food shortage. This is a explosive cocktail. It’s a recipe for revolution. I did not see this danger, but there is still time.”

Everyone but Tifa nodded.

“We need to get a grip. Text me before you make big decisions. There are already rebels in the midgar slums: we need to get rid of the Flightless soon. They’ll serve as an example. The lowest class is the most powerful when mobilized. We all saw how quickly Edge appeared once people were on the go. As long as they don’t see that potential, we stay on top. I’m all for democracy…” He looked at Reeve apologetically.

“When the world is ready for it.” Reeve filled in.

“We need to intensify propaganda. We should go back to the roots of Shinra and restart the weapon-manufacturing industry. We must arm the people with guns and spears and electricity against monsters.”

Some managers nodded.

Rufus took his phone. He pointed it at the screen in the room. The letters CALLING... GODO appeared on the screen.

Emperor Godo picked up and he looked just like Yuffie, only old, and male, and tired. Maybe he was tired because it was fifteen hours earlier.

Rufus explained the situation about materia death and materia corruption.

Godo was alarmed by the development. He did not ask Rufus for help. He was too proud.

Instead, Rufus Shinra did something no one had expected. “Can we give all the good materia that we have left, to you? For safekeeping?”

The entire room held its breath.

“Are you sure about this, boss?” Rude said.

“We need to set aside our differences. We’re different but we live on the same planet. All we do affects the rest.”

Godo had a thoughtful look on his face.

INCOMING CALL was displayed in the left side of the screen. It blinked.

“Hold that thought,” Rufus said, and put the Emperor of Wutai on hold. He picked up.

“Hello.”

“Boss. I hope I’m calling before the board meeting starts.”

“It’s fine, report.”

“Moogle Girl also theorized the feathers are vital to his return. Every child is in the slums is now looking for feathers. SilverElite contacted the Flightless. The two groups will have a conversation soon.”

Rufus Shinra was looking at Doctor Sun as he said in the phone: “Find a way to attend that tea party.”

“Affermative. I have a way in. She trusts me. The next train raid will be tomorrow’s 03 a.m. Edge express on the west rail. Two-hundred children enlisted yesterday. MG continues to be unchallenged in the ranks. Materia-child density is 4 on 1.”

“All materia functional?”

“Sir, yes sir. I have a question: should SilverElite be in the possession of feathers. What is my recommended form of action?”

“No physical contact between her and the feathers. Should arise, before it happens, kill her before she finds a way to change into Sephiroth.”

Tifa stifled a gasp with her hand over her mouth. She pressed her back into the chair. Not Sephiroth. Not this. Not again.

“Sir, yes sir. Nothing more to report. Requesting dismissal.”

“Dismissed.” Rufus switched to the other phonecall. “Emperor Godo,” he smiled. “I apologise. The intel on the Moogle Girl came in. It appears all their materia is functional.”

“Seems like you will have to rely on Wutai now. The great Empire of Wutai will have to fight for humanity’s survival again. If you want, you may give it here for safekeeping.”

“Nsizwa, arrange-” and Rufus stopped. He coughed. His shoulder began to jerk, which lead to a full-body spasm. He gurgled.

Rude and Doctor Sun both stood up. They rushed to Rufus’ side.

Tifa sat still.

They strapped Rufus in the wheelchair so he would not fall out. The board of directors vacated the room. Two nurses dashed in.

She didn’t think the would be a question round. But her initial question had been answered. Now she knew why Rufus needed Cloud. She could arrange a meeting. She would. She couldn’t ignore this, and neither… neither could he.

They needed to put a stop to Moogle Girl and her Flightless before they managed to summon Sephiroth.


	28. Chapter 28

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> SilverElite

“Sephi-roth! Sephi-roth! Sephi-roth!” the audience of children chanted.

Moogle Girl hid behind the stairs of the mako reactor. It would be her turn soon. The area under the stairs was dry and the floor uneven. Everything was covered by a small layer of concrete dust. She looked between the stairs to the play, but she couldn’t see much. The crowd was so dense.

She heard an animal growl. Three feet away from her was a Scissorus, a crocodile-monster on thin spider legs that could snap you in two with its big beak. It munched as easily though bones as it did though steel beams. So this is where it had went. It stared at her and lunged forward to bite.

She stared back. Unflinching.

The Scissorus abandoned the attack. It growled more.

She narrowed her eyes.

The monster began to bow its head down. It snipped its big beak twice. It sank through its legs. It put its head onto the ground.

Moogle Girl stared.

It whined. It moved a little back in the shadows of the stairs.

“Sephi-roth! SEPHI-ROTH!”

It was her turn! The climbed the stairs a few steps and then humped over the heads of fifty children easily. She landed in the middle of the play. “Good to see you... Kunsel.” Her line drowned in the thunderous cheer.

“What do you want, Sephiroth?” he asked. And because not everyone had heard it, again: “Sephiroth! What do you want?”

“To destroy Shin-Ra,” she said. “Revenge for Platefall. Revenge for making the planet uninhabitable! If the Flightless die… If we die, then the world dies with us!”

Thunderous applause.

She fought Kunsel, one-to-one. She did it as fast as she could. She spun, she hacked. He attacked and blocked. When she felt good, she lift up her sword. She and buster glowed red, and then she attacked. She carved three lines into the soil with her limit break. She defeated Kunsel.

She put her foot on Kunsel’s shoulder. “Now it must rain! I will heal everyone-”

“Moogle girl!” a girl called. That was really rude to interrupt.

“Shhh!” other children said.

“-who hates the world enough!” Moogle Girl finished.

The girl was the messenger type because she had yellow plastic around her wrist. She snuck forth through the lines. “Moogle girl!” she hissed. “Message from the Silver Elite! They answered us!”

That was more important.

“And now I scatter into feathers… poof! I’m gone! The end! The play’s over!” Moogle Girl said. It wasn’t, the never-be-a-memory-scene deserved to be much bigger, but that didn’t matter right now.

The children clapped and started talking about the play.

Kunsel stood up and brushed Moogle Girl’s dusty foot print off his shoulder.

“SilverElite left graffiti on the wall. They drew a butterfly with one wing!”

“That’s really unoriginal,” Kunsel said. “Shin-Ra will find out in no time. Go back and get the girl that drew the moogle to spray-paint over it.”

The messenger girl looked at her. She didn’t take advice from adults.

“Do it,” Moogle Girl said. “The graffiti musn’t be pretty. It must hide the butterfly. Kunsel and I will go to the Butterfly Inn. Hurry.”

The messenger girl took off.

“How are we going to do it?” Kunsel asked. “Just walk in?”

“We can’t just walk in,” Moogle Girl said. “Cissnei said I could never come to the inn again.”

“Why not?”

Moogle Girl didn’t want to say anything about Two-Guns. She just shrugged.

“So are you going to hold yourself to that?” Kunsel asked.

“No,” Moogle Girl said. “I will just have to sneak in when Cissnei isn’t looking.”

“Is that possible?” Kunsel said. “Do you have a plan?”

“I think I do? I’ll figure out the details when we get there,” Moogle Girl said. She put two fingers in her mouth and whistled. It didn’t sound like anything. Then Kunsel took her elbow and lift it up, and suddenly her whistle went well. The sound made three messenger kids look up. Moogle Girl waved them over.

“Kunsel and I are going to meet Silver Elite. You. Pick five kids to escort us. Go. You, collect the squad leaders. Go.” And to the third one she said. “Listen carefully. Tell the squad leaders that if something happens, Silke is in charge. No one can have more than one dose of Rejoy per day, we don’t want people to become reunion-moaners. Now go tell Silke what I told you.”

“Yes, Moogleroth!” the third boy said. He dashed off.

“I thought you’d leave me behind,” Kunsel said.

Moogle Girl looked at him. “You’re going to wish I had.”

They went to the Butterfly inn, but didn’t enter. They remained one alley back. It was a little before dinner, the perfect time for certain types of people to have a meal and then go upstairs with a Butterfly.

Moogle Girl knew the inn would be busy with people. “Over there is the front door,” she said. “Go in, sit down somewhere, and wait for me. I will take the back door and steal someone’s wings. I’m still wearing my butterfly clothes under my jacket.”

“You’ve been a Butterfly girl?”

“Look.” She zipped the jacket open and showed him.

“Oh god,” he said. He immediately averted his gaze and face.

That made her feel weird. She had only wanted to show him her clothes! Why did he have to be like this? It was embarrassing. She felt her face heat up. “I’ll see you inside.”

She took off. She went to the back door of the Butterfly Inn. She climbed the new-looking stairs. On the outer wall she saw a black circle. She was reminded to how she’d thrown the Rejoy at Two-Guns and he had shot it. The Rejoy had exploded. The explosion had destroyed the electricity of the advertisement boards, and it still hadn’t been fixed.

She opened the door. She snuck inside. This was the second level of the Butterfly Inn, the long corridor with the office, washingroom, and beds. She even heard some people moan.

MG took off her jacket. She pulled the sword from her back, and took off the shoes. She peeked into the washing room through the keyhole, but no one was inside. She opened the door. There was really no one.

_I could take a shower_ , she thought. Suddenly she felt dirty. Her new deepest desire was to take a shower. She put her sword against the wall and hid it behind towels. She found an unused plastic bag. She put Two-Guns jacket in it, and the Moogle plush toy, and her materia. She had six materia now. No one would find her items. This was a busy hour, and even if someone came in here, Moogle Girl was sure that no one would touch these items. Butterfly workers just didn't do stealing. You just didn't.

She stripped down real quick, and took a shower. The water was cold first. It made her chill. Then it grew warm, and it grew hot. She smiled and washed her hair, her face, her everything. It felt so good to be clean!

She wanted to stay under this shower forever, but any girl could come in. So she dried off, got dressed. She blow-dried her hair. In the rack with the butterfly wings, she found her own set. She strapped them on. They had the colours of moogles: red, old paper, and purple.

_This is how SilverElite will recognize me,_ she thought.

Now all she put the brown shoes back on, the ones that Cloud had given her when she’d snuck around in the church. Why he had kept woman’s shoes in that church was beyond her. She checked herself in the mirror, and she thought she looked good. She went downstairs. Going down the stairs was strange in shoes with heels, but she managed to do it sort of fluently because she held the railing.

Cissnei was nowhere to be seen.

“Megara?” said a butterfly girl holding plates of hot food for customers. “You’re back! I thought you eloped with Two-Guns.”

“Don’t tell Cissnei that I’m here,” Moogle Girl said.

“Sure! I’ll keep it from the bosses. But later you will have to tell me what happened. You must! You were on the news and all!” the Butterfly girl said.

"I will. Shall I take those plates from you?" Megara took the plates. Table seven. She served a pair of businesswomen their meals. She didn’t see Kunsel anywhere. She might as well serve some more food. She went back to the bar. Table fourteen. That was a group of rowdy friends, probably a bachelor party.

One of them reached for her behind. He grabbed good feel, all over her bum.

Previously, Megara used to not mind. That was before Two-Guns. She had been through shit, and worse. Now she did mind this unwanted touch. She looked around, and glared.

The entire group howled like wolves and laughed. It made her feel small.

“Dude, did you see her eyes!” one said.

“Yeah, yeah. Wicked and beautiful.”

“You'd go over that?”

“Imagine those eyes on you when-” he made a pumping motion.

She wished she could stifle their noise. She looked to the bar, and then to the crowd. She finally spotted Kunsel at the back of the establishment, in the seat Two-Guns used to occupy. He had his back to the wall and could perfectly oversee the entire room.

She sat down across of him. “I found them.”

“What? How?” he asked. He didn’t even look at her. He looked at the crowd.

“Two women. They are at table seven.”

“How do you know it’s them?”

“Because it’s two _women_ at table _seven_. Look around you. Most people are men.”

“I don’t know,” Kunsel said.

Megara went to table seven. “Is everything according to wish?” she asked.

“I’ve got some questions,” the lady asked. “My friend and I had a discussion. In which hand should I hold my knife?”

Moogle Girl looked at them. She looked at everyone around them, who had their knives in their right hand. She said, “Left.”

The women looked at each other.

“He wields it left.”

The lady pulled out a chair. “What's the name of his sword?”

Moogle Girl took the seat. She waved Kunsel over. “Masamune.”

“What’s the name of his ultimate attack?”

She didn’t know that. How was she supposed to know?

Kunsel approached, “The military doesn’t share that sort of secrets.” He pulled a seat from an unoccupied table. He sat down next to Moogle Girl. “But it’s Super Nova.”

They exchanged names. The women were called Boomchi and Tomo. Moogle Girl thought their names were odd, but they explained they preferred to use these name to remain as anonymous as could be. Shin-Ra was still hunting for information on Sephiroth, and they were well aware they sided with the Enemy of the World.

“You’re really Moogle Girl, aren’t you?” Boomchi said. “Can you show me your Moogle toy?”

“I can’t. It’s upstairs.”

“Alright then. Your eyes are so bright,” Boomchi said. “I believe you. No one without enhancements has eyes like that. You can’t fake it.” He voice was calm, and she smiled. She lead the conversation and it felt… good. “So, who is you friend?”

“This? This is-”

“I recognize him.” Tomo said.

Kunsel turned to her so sharply that it almost frightened Moogle Girl. Suddenly Kunsel was smiling, but it wasn’t a genuine smile. It was the _mess-you-up_ smile that Moogle Girl had never seen before. “No,” he said. “You don’t recognize me.”

Tomo bowed her head and used he hair as her shield.

Boomchi sat up straighter, and put her hand on the center of the table. She claimed the space between Kunsel and her girlfriend. “Hey.”

Moogle Girl didn’t want the grown-ups to fight without her. She didn’t want them to talk over her head. She put a hand on Kunsel’s leg. “Calm down.”

Kunsel slouched, but he wasn’t calming down. She could feel his clenched thigh muscles under her hand. He wasn’t calm.

“Look at me,” she said.

Kunsel shook his head. He tried to shake his leg free.

She wouldn’t let him.

He gave in. He turned his head. He looked.

“Everything that’s said here is secret,” Moogle Girl said. “Right?”

Boomchi and Tomo nodded.

Moogle Girl said: “I don’t care for who you are, as long as you’re with me. I won’t betray you. We’re friends.”

Kunsel didn’t ease up.

She took her hand away.

That eased him. He exhaled long. He pressed his back against the back of his chair. “Let’s get to business.”

Boomchi nodded. She looked around, then she lowered her voice. “What do you want to know?”

The other three leaned in. They were four heads bowed over one table, like a big secret.

She supposed it was a pretty big secret. “I want to find Sephiroth’s feathers,” Moogle Girl said. “Do you know where they are?”

“Some,” Tomo said quietly. “They’re scattered all over the world. Some members of SilverElite have a feather in house.”

“Can they give them to me?” Moogle Girl said.

“How?” Tomo asked. “We don’t want to risk anyone’s life.”

“Our members do not have a public profile. That is why SilverElite still exists after all these years of anti-Sephiroth propaganda. We would give you some, just not by compromising on safety.”

Moogle Girl thought deep. This was difficult. Then she said: “Can some of our Flightless pick up feathers? You’re sure it’s not Shin-Ra if it’s a child like me who meets with your members? Right? Then it doesn’t count!”

“We have feathers around the globe,” Boomchi said. “Walking-”

Kunsel cut her off. “Transport isn’t a problem.”

“Not for you, no,” Tomo said.

Kunsel opend his mouth to reply.

Tomo immediately bowed her head.

Moogle Girl put a hand on his leg under the table. _Calm._

He grabbed her hand.

That made Megara feel strange. This hand-holding was foreign, because she didn’t hold hands often. When she did, it was with children smaller than her. His hand was very big in contrast. It swallowed hers almost completely, and he held on.

Boomchi said something that Moogle Girl almost didn’t catch. “It’s good the Flightless can travel.”

Moogle Girl said, “yes,” and felt dumb. She couldn’t think of something better to say.

“Yes,” said Kunsel, a moment after her.

His hand was so big! It was much rougher, as if she wasn’t holding a hand but a warm rock. His skin was dry. When she moved her thumb over the back of his hand, she felt like all her insides were gone and instead there were bubbles that popped happily.

“How do I change into Sephiroth?” Moogle Girl asked. “What’s the procedure?”

Boomchi said, “There has been a lot of discussion over the years, but there’s a consensus… among the superfans. We know how to do it. There is a certain procedure, certain _requirements_ that need to be in place. First, you need the feathers, you guessed that right. Next you need-”

“Wait,” Tomo said. “I want to know what sort of Sephiroth to expect.”

“Tomo?” Boomchi said.

Kunsel asked: “Do you trust Sephiroth?”

“Unconditionally,” Tomo said.

“Then you’ve got nothing to worry about.”

Tomo didn’t look at ease. “I want to know which of you is going to be it? Someone needs to be left behind as support. Which of you will change into Sephiroth?”

Moogle Girl and Kunsel said at the same time: “Me.”

Moogle Girl turned to him: “What?”

Kunsel continued to look forward to Tomo. “It is going to be me.”

“No.” Moogle Girl pulled her hand back.

He didn’t want to let go at first.

Then she pulled harder.

He let go.

She said: “It’s me. It has to be me.”

Boomchi and Tomo looked a little awkward by this disagreement.

“No, it doesn’t,” Kunsel said.

“Does it matter that I’m a girl?” Moogle Girl asked the women.

“No,” Boomchi said.

“It is not going to be you,” Kunsel said.

“I worked hard for this!” Moogle Girl stood up. Her chair scraped backwards. “It is me. It has got to be me.”

Some customers looked around.

A butterfly waitress moved past Moogle Girl.

“Shhh. Sit down.” Kunsel said. He and Tomo both took her arms gently.

They pulled her down onto her chair.

She didn’t want to sit any more. Who did he think he was! She couldn’t sit still. She pulled her arms free, and crossed them. This way Tomo and Kunsel wouldn’t be able to grab her wrists any more.

“I think it’s for the best if it’s me,” Kunsel said.

“No,” Moogle Girl said.

“Maybe you should go somewhere else and talk this out privately.” Boomchi said.

Kunsel smiled at her, a very placating smile. As if he was apologising for the scene she was causing! As if she was a child!

“No, it’s going to be me,” Moogle Girl said.

“No, it’s not,” Kunsel said.

“Guys,” Tomo said.

“Perhaps you two should step outside for a moment? Talk this over?”

“I do what I WANT,” Moogle Girl raised her voice with every word. “And-!”

Kunsel tried to put his hand over her mouth.

She abandoned what she wanted to say. She moved away instead.

“Keep your voice low,” Tomo whispered.

“We will abandon the meeting if you attract too much attention,” Boomchi said.

Now Kunsel stood up. “Let’s go outside.”

Moogle Girl gritted her teeth. “No, then everyone will think you’re stealing a Butterfly girl. We’re going upstairs.”

“Fine,” Kunsel smiled. The quickness with which he abandoned that placating smile, betrayed he did not like this argument at all. “We will be right back. Don’t leave.”

They stood up.

Moogle Girl glanced over the heads and Cissnei was nowhere to be seen. So she grabbed Kunsel’s hand, and pulled him to the checkout. She said, “I’m taking him upstairs.”

The girl behind the desk was a Butterfly girl that knew Moogle Girl, for she gave her the door key to room seven. That was her old room! “Pay here, please.”

Kunsel gave Moogle Girl a tight-lipped look. She looked back and he immediately avoided from her red-eyed glare, just like how this morning that Scissorus monster under the stairs had scuttleded away. Kunsel pulled out his wallet to pay -- she saw that he had a lot of paper money. He paid without complaint, but that silence did not mean that it was over.

Well, fine! Fine! Let him pay. He could afford renting a Butterfly.


	29. Chapter 29

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Quarrel

And as soon as Kunsel had paid for renting her as a Butterfly Girl, Moogle Girl took his hand again. She tightened her grip on his hand. She might have crushed it, if he hadn’t been former SOLDIER. But his hand was bigger, and stronger, and harder. Despite that, she practically dragged him up the stairs and through the hallway, to room seven.

She slammed the door shut behind them. She turned the key. She locked it.

“You are trying to steal Sephiroth from me!”

Kunsel balled and flexed the hand she had been holding in order to get the blood to flow back. Now his head snapped up to look at her. “That’s what you think?”

“Yes! And it’s not fair!” Moogle Girl said.

“I’m not trying to steal him from you.”

“You are!”

“No, I’m not.”

She thought Kunsel sounded shifty. Downstairs he said _yes_ , and now he was saying _no?_ It made little sense. “Then I’m going to be Sephiroth?”

“No,-”

She put her hands on her face and let out an angry roar. _See? See!_

“-let me explain.”

“This better be good, young man,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest like her mother used to do. “Because it sure does look like it!”

“…‘Young man’ ?” Kunsel repeated. Suddenly he had a smile.

He wasn’t taking her seriously at all!

She put her hands on her hips. She puffed her chest up.

“You sound like a mom. Do you have any idea how old I am?”

“I don’t care!” She said. All adults are liars. “I thought you were different from most adults but it’s not looking good for you, mister!”

Kunsel smiled more. As if he thought her adorable.

That only made her angrier. “If you’re turning out to be betraying me too, I’m going to-“

“Ssssh, Moogle Girl,” he said, placating.

The shush sound suddenly brought back memories. Kunsel said something else, but she didn’t hear it. She remembered being in this very room with Tseng, who didn’t say anything until he had disabled all the microphones.

She gasped. She put her hands over her mouth. The microphones! Shin-Ra was listening in!

“Shush!” she said. She put a finger on her lips. “There’s microphones here!”

Kunsel said: “How do you know?”

“We can’t talk more. I need to find them and take the batteries out. Then we can talk.”

“Can I help?” he said.

“Ssssssh!” she said, waving her finger even more prominentely on her lips. Then she glanced around the room. She got to work. She crawled under the desk. She checked behind the mirror. She went under the bed. She searched every nook and cranny and all the while she was trying to think as little as possible about this room.

Her anger to Kunsel was pushed to the back by the memories - memories made physical in the shape of furniture. So much had happened here, and now she was inside this room, everything came rushing back. Tseng teaching her how to disable mircophones so she could smuggle Rejoy in secret, while the mako-smuggling remained recorded. Falling asleep in an the first bed – an actual bed- since the Plate had fallen. She remembered working here as a waitress.

And Two-Guns. The person she tried to think of fewest.

“Don’t sit on the bed while I’m under it!”

“Sssh,” he said.

She peeled the last mic from a foot of the bed, and then she crawled out from under it. She had to go between his legs before she could sit up between his knees. “That’s not funny!”

Two-Guns reached out and put a hand on her head. He pushed her brown hair back. Dust and a string of cobweb clung to his fingers.

She stared at him.

“Megara...” he said, on that low tone that only Two-Guns had ever used. He pronounced her name as if it was a foreign word that held magical potency. It made her feel special. The rest of the world called her Moogle Girl, not _Megara._

Slowly the sight of Two-Guns blended with that of Kunsel. The image of Two-Guns’ angular face and black hair faded away, to be replaced by Kunsel’s helmet and worried mouth. She could see her own reflection in the helmet.

“I want to see your face,” she said.

He continued to look at her.

“I really want to see you face.”

“No,” he said.

_I need to see you’re not Two-Guns._ She knew he wasn’t Two-Guns. But it felt different. It felt like he was. Maybe if she saw Kunsel’s real face, then the new sight would override her expectation. He would be Kunsel, not Two-Guns 2.0: another man she did and did not trust, another man that was so much older. Another man who gave her the electric zaps in her tummy, that no boy her age could give.

“Please.”

He leaned back, putting his hands behind him on the mattress to support his weight. “No.”

“Prettiest please, Kunsel.”

“I said no, and it’s staying no. My helmet is sort of… my thing. My defining trademark, you know? It’s more ‘me’ than the rest of ‘me’.”

“Oh, sort of like Moogle?”

“Yeah, sort of like your Moogle.”

But Kunsel said it wrong. Moogle wasn’t _her_ moogle, it had been Xander’s toy. Mum and Dad had given it to him. Her cactuar had been lost in Platefall. She had dug in the rubble for weeks but not found it back. She said, “Can I sit down next to you?”

He moved over.

She sat down.

They were quiet.

“I think-“ she started.

“There is-“

They both stopped.

“You go first,” she said.

“No, you go,” he said.

“I need to be Sephiroth,” she said. “It needs to be me.”

Now his voice was kind again. “Why?” He sounded so, so much like Two-Guns.

It made her tear up. Her eyes filled. She bend her head and her fists clenched her miniskirt. “I worked hard for this! It should be my right!”

He just sat there. He didn’t say anything. He watched.

“I don’t want…” she said, “a-anyone else to die. I hate living like this. I hate my life. I hate this world. Everyone else just dies and I’m left behind.”

“This time, do you want to be the one that goes away?” he asked.

She wiped her face with her hands. She dried her hands on the jacket sleeve.

“I’m asking because once Sephiroth gets in your head, there will be no room for anything else but him.”

“I do and don’t want to be him,” Megara said. “I don’t know. All I know is that he’s the solution.”

“How is he the solution?”

“He understands the Red Lifestream and Green Lifestream better than anyone else. Once he destroys this dying world, the Lifestreams can start again on a new planet, on a shining future. That’s what he promised.”

“You want to destroy the world?”

“I don’t know. I just want my family. I am a survivor. I want to keep on living and for that I need power. I’m alive… while everyone else is not. But Sephiroth is with me. He’s my family now.”

“There’s no one else?” He meant the Flightless.

She shrugged. She said, “There’s just so many of them. Almost two thousand. I know maybe one hundred by face, and I only talk to the group leaders. I know like… five names. I don’t want to learn their names. The children are just like me. I don’t want to see them being like me. I don’t like me. I can see they know what it takes to survive. And I know they see the drive to survive in me, too. That’s why they will do anything I say and - that frightens me! They’re my responsibility more than they are my family.”

“Like your little brother?” Kunsel supplied.

“Every one of them is Xander.” And at the same time, they were not.

“So… there’s no one else.”

“Mum and Dad used to be. And then there was Two-Guns, but he-…”

“Tell me about Two-Guns.”

She shook her head.

“Please.”

She shook her head more. “I can’t, I can’t,” And she felt awful. She pressed her hand against her forehead, very hard.

Kunsel looked.

She fought not to cry. Her eyes filled with water. Her nose was full. Breathing was difficult. She had to swallow all the water. The only person she could think of was Two-Guns and the pillars of fire.

Then she cried more, because her hailing of Sephiroth had killed him, but also because Sephiroth had saved her.

“I live while I shouldn’t,” she said. “It’s not fair. It’s not fair.”

Kunsel said, “The world is not a fair place. What you have is called survivor’s guilt, and I have had it too. I think everyone in SOLDIER has had it in some degree. Let me tell you this. Changing into Sephiroth won’t suddenly fulfill your debts. This is a battle for you.”

“I don’t want to fight,” she said. She leaned to him, and fell against him. “I’m so tired of fighting, of leading, of surviving. I’m so tired of everything. I wish I could be a child again at home and that everything was normal.”

“You are not a child any more,” Kunsel said. He wrapped his arm around her. “And while that sucks…”

She moved closer to him. She was falling apart and being embraced felt like he was holding her together. She needed this.

“…I’m happy that you are you.”

She put her knees over his lap. She put her arms around his chest. She put her head on his shoulder.

He rubbed his hand over her back. Slow strokes. He pressed on her spine, as if he gave her back her backbone.

It calmed her. She pressed her eyes onto Kunsel’s shoulder and now they were damp and dry.

He looked down.

She looked up, just a little.

“Megara,” he said softly. _Megara,_ not _Moogle Girl._

She looked down a little.

His face was close. His chin was near her nose. She could smell his breath when he whispered: “-don’t become Sephiroth.”

They were still for a moment.

_Don’t become Sephiroth._

She tilted her head up. Their mouths connected, and she kissed him.

He breathed in through his nose. Perhaps that was in wonder, or in shock.

She pressed her lips against his, she wanted this. His mouth was soft and a little stubbly but the way he replied to her made her heart soar. He leaned in. He kissed her back.

She had kissed Two-Guns but he’d just stayed motionless.

Kunsel was kissing her back, and moving his head softly to apply just enough pressure to make it feel like they were in the sea, on a lonely boat, drifting on the waves. This push-withdraw motion made her dizzy with how much she liked it. Everything else vanished. It was just the kiss, hyperreal and surreal. She felt herself grow big, as if her soul was too big for her body. Her tummy buzzed with electric excitement.

He kissed her more. He kissed her until she smiled.

“I can’t promise that,” she whispered

“I know,” he whispered against her lips. He sent heat to her face. He kept his eyes closed.

She opened her red eyes slightly. “I will really do anything to survive.”

“Anything?”

“Anything.”

He pressed their noses and foreheads together.

“I would even kiss a WRO spy,” she said.

His smile became a grimace. “For how long have you known?”

Her heart sank. A part of her had hoped he would have denied it, but at least he was honest. Perhaps he was too proud to lie. “Since I saw my pictures on the telly.”

They didn’t move.

“I learnt not to trust adults,” she whispered. _Not Two-Guns, not Dr. Sun, not even you._

“So that’s why you didn’t list me among your family,” he whispered.

“Sorry.”

“It’s okay. Why did you allow me to stay around you?”

She put a hand on the back of his neck. She kissed him again.

He found it very difficult to break the kiss, he kept chasing her lips.

She said: “I… need your council. When you pretend, you’re still pretending to help me.”

“When did you grow up,” he smiled.

“Never. I’m never growing up. I’m only growing clever.”

“Clever. You’re clever for disabling the microphones to keep my reputation intact with the WRO and Shin-Ra, while still having this accusing talk with me. Yet… ah, it wasn’t all pretence.”

“No?”

“Look,” he leaned back a little. He broke the proximity and let go of her, so he had his hands free to take hold of his helmet. Then he slipped it off. None of Megara’s earlier begging to take off the helmet had worked, but now he finally revealed his face. From the helmet feel red locks of hair. Those framed his face. He had blue eyes. Freckles. He put the helmet aside and looked apologetic about it.

She immediately recognized his face. Megara gasped, with one hand over her mouth. “You! I know you! You’re Genesis! You're Genesis Rhapsodos!"

He didn't say anything.

"You were my mum's favourite!"

"Megara."

"You were Sephiroth's friend!" she said. "You were-"

"-one of the three Generals," he filled in. "I know who I look like. You can stop now."

She grew quiet.

He managed to look even more apologetic. “Sorry,” he said. “I’m still Kunsel.”

“No, I recognize you!”

“You recognize the face, but it’s not my face,” he said. “This is a face I borrowed. Shin-Ra gave SOLDIERs his cells, and as chronic underarchiever, I had some too. It changed one-third of all the army into Genesis-clones. I’m like the Sephiroth remnant you strive to become, only my transformation got ‘stuck’.”

She looked at how he turned the helmet in his hands. The round parts of the helmet reflected the three lights in the room.

He said: “There’s a myth that Sephiroth’s cells, S-cells, can turn a Genesis-clone back to normal. A feather isn’t enough, we need the real Sephiroth.”

“We? Who is ‘we’?”

“Others like me,” he said. “Survivors.”

“So who are you working for?” she asked.

“For a little bit of everyone. For the WRO, for you, for Rufus Shinra, but mostly for my brothers. If I become Sephiroth,” his voice was higher with strain, “then at least I can give them back their faces.”

“How do you know you won’t become stuck in a stage between Sephiroth and Genesis?”

“Let’s ask Tomo and Boomchi of SilverElite if that’s an option.”

She nodded.

He said: "You can't tell anyone about my face."

"Why not?"

"Because I'm asking you.”

"Alright."

He bowed his head. He raised the helmet to put it back on.

She put a hand on his elbow. She stopped him from putting the helmet back on.

He paused. He looked at her.

Their eyes met. Hers were dark red. His eyes glowed bright blue. They stared at each other, and leaned in on the same time. They kissed again. This time it was softer, and more needy. It was okay when he put his helmet aside on the bed. She wanted it gone too.

He took his face in his hands. He kissed her a little bit harder.

She returned it in full.

“Survivors,” he whispered.

She closed her eyes and pretended she didn’t notice him crying.

His mouth rubbed against her softly, leaving kisses, leaving nips. It made her weak. He cupped her cheeks and ran his fingers over her ears. He pushed his fingers into her hair.

She leaned back, and he followed. Her back was now against the mattress and sheets, and when he leaned over her, he pressed her further into the mattress. It felt pleasant. He was a all-covering weight. It felt a little bit scary because she knew he was stronger, but he wasn’t exersizing that power now. He was so gentle. He kissed her sweetly, in the way that made her heart beat fast.

“Kiss me again,” she said, and ran her fingers through his red hair. “Kunsel.”

He didn’t need his talisman either to prove who he was. He kissed her again, and they made out until he’d stopped crying. She thought that toughening up was perhaps unnecessary too soon.

 

.

“He’s going to be Sephiroth,” Moogle Girl said to the representatives of SilverElite.

Boomchi and Tomo looked at each other. Then they looked at the pair. “The SephGen fans will hate this, but the SephCloud fans will like it.”

“I have no idea what you are talking about,” Megara said. “Could you explain?”

“No no,” Kunsel said, “No need to mention LillyWhite and the rest, that’s all eighteen-plus talk.”

She looked from one adult to the other.

“Moogle Girl and I meant to ask you, if I set out to become Sephiroth, is it possible I could get ‘stuck’ between this Genesis form and the Sephiroth form?”

Boomchi rubbed her chin while Tomo was drawing on a napkin. Seeing that Tomo wouldn’t reply, she said: “Maybe. It’s possible. My personal guess is that ‘changing’ will give you back your normal face or will make you change into Sephiroth - if you meet the other requirements. I will have to discuss the 'stuck' option with the rest of the fan club, but it doesn't sound probable to me. ‘Stuck’ sounds like a badly written fanfiction. I think it’s more likely that the change works, or that it won’t fails and the Moogle Girl needs to become him instead.”

Moogle Girl nodded.

“We know how we can get the feathers from Edge into Midgar’s underbelly where the Flightless reside,” Kunsel said. “Your members can give them to the red-eyed street children.”

“Are they powerful enough to fight off Shinra troops?”

“No,” Moogle Girl said, “But they are fast, and small, and know the streets well. Some have been thieves. They know how to run.”

“I don’t think running will be enough,” Tomo said.

“Enhanced running,” Moogle Girl stressed.

Tomo nodded.

“What do we do about the feathers collected by our members all over the world?” Boomchi said.

“Transport is not a problem,” Kunsel said. “The information distribution is.”

“We could exchange phone numbers, each of our members could text Kunsel individually?” Boomchi suggested.

“We’re not dealing with Kunsel, we’re dealing with Moogle Girl,” Tomo said. “I vote that _she_ gets the feathers, and that she uses them or gives them away however she sees fit.”

“I will give them to Kunsel,” she said. “I trust him.”

Kunsel looked at her.

“You trust him completely?” Tomo asked.

“I trust his motivations.”

Under the table he took her hand.

_His hand! Hand, hand, hand._ She felt her face heat up. She folded her fingers around his. She pretended all was normal.

Kunsel said: “Shin-Ra is monitoring phones.”

“The only reason we can sit here, is because there is so much interfearing noise,” Moogle Girl said.

“The superfans could go to the abandoned mako reactors,” Kunsel said. “Then ‘Genesis’ will be waiting there. They know what Genesis looks like.”

“That’s clever,” Tomo and Boomchi agreed.

They put the distribution date as the last Sunday of this month, midday, so all superfans and transporters would have suffiecient time to prepare.

That brought them to the next important question:

“How do we ressurect Sephiroth?” MG asked quietly.

They all leaned over the table more. They were four heads together, with Tomo on the lookout.

“This is the most secret information,” Boomchi said. “Not even Shin-Ra knows this. Moogle Girl, do you trust Kunsel?”

“Yes.”

“Then I’ll speak. This is called the Jenova Omega Theory, by Anguipes Seraph. There there is also the Jenova Paracite theory by Professor Bunderhagen, but his theory doesn’t line up with the rest of canon. Okay, a quick run-down. Two lifestreams,” she paused as if Moogle Girl didn’t already know this. Then she continued: “The ‘crash of the Calamity’ two-thousand years ago was a neutral occurance: simply a small planet bumping into a bigger one. The that small planet’s ‘OMEGA’, just like the OMEGA event we had four years ago, took a form. That personification of the Lifestream, is called ‘JENOVA’. She was dugged up by Shin-Ra scientists. Sephiroth was created using her cells.”

“Sephiroth is an alien?” she asked.

“We are all made up of Lifestream. Sephiroth too. Over time, our energy deplates and then we die. Sephiroth has an impossibly high concentration of it. His body is a closed system. That’s why he doesn’t tire.”

“Does it matter if the Lifestream SOLDIERs consume is green or red?” Kunsel asked.

“Jenova cells, aka red lifestream, it changes you.”

“How?” Moogle Girl asked.

“I won’t go into it right now, but basically, depending on whether a body is red-dominant or green-dominant, positive mutations such as enhancement occur, or degradation or stigma happen. For someone to change into Sephiroth, there is a recepy. They first must _want_ to become more powerful. Being receptable to the cells is a priority.”

“And if they don’t want to be more powerful?” MG asked.

Tomo said: “Rejection makes mutations occur. Breaking the closed system of the body causes degradation.”

“Oh,” said Kunsel. “Ooh.”

“Okay,” MG said. “They person must want to become powerful. What else?”

“They need Jenova cells,” Boomchi said. “Jenova is pure Lifestream. Her cells can be molded into anything. When Sephiroth vanished, he molded those cells into feathers. Collect the feathers, and a red-lifestream-dominant-body can mold the feathers into physically into becoming him.”

“Okay. How?”

“We think pressing one or more of them onto your body will enough to make the Jenova cells part of your system. Like Sephiroth took pressed Jenova cells to his wound, or Kadaj pressed her cells to his tummy. Or perhaps you must wear the feathers. Possibly consume them.”

Megara made a face. “Eating feathers?”

“Hey. I don’t make the rules here.”

“Enjoy your meal,” she said to Kunsel.

Kunsel made a face back to her. Yuch.

“It’s not enough to change into Sephiroth physically using Jenova cells,” Boomchi said. “Then you’ll just look like a Remnant. There needs to be an anchor, someone who remembers how Sephiroth was during his life. As long as Sephiroth is remembered, he will continue to exist.”

“As long as Sephiroth is remembered, he will continue to exist,” Moogle Girl repeated.

Boomchi said: “And he will be created the way he was remembered by the Anchor.”

That was frightenening.

Moogle Girl turned her head to Kunsel. She rememebered her conversations with Kunsel. _He’s not the Sephiroth I once knew. He has a plan. He is not crazy. I trust my General._

“I knew Sephiroth personally – back when he was a hero. I will be the anchor.”

She asked Boomchi, “Where is Sephiroth right now? Why doesn’t he remake himself?”

“He’s adrift. The Green Lifestream doesn’t host Red Lifestream, so it’s attacking him. He is only alive via his Anchors – anyone who remembers him. He can’t remake himself. He rememebers even less of himself than before the Advent of Children. He’s in a very bad place.”

“But the Advent of Children is over,” Moogle Girl said. “Omega’s dark night is over. It’s now the time of the Children.”

They agreed.

“What happened to Sephiroth’s mother?” Kunsel asked.

Moogle Girl thought, _That Red-Lifestream Omega-creature is recycled in Sephiroth, with him as new god. That’s why he speaks of destroying the world. He wants to separate these warring Lifestreams, the good and bad stream. Everyone who hates the world as it is goes in one stream, and everyone who made it so goes in the other._

“She doesn’t exist any more,” Tomo said. “Her body is gone.”

“Could she be summoned?” Megara said.

“With what?” Boomchi asked. “No. Her body is recycled. If she did somehow continue to exit, which she doesn’t or else someone would have found her in the past two-thousand years, she would be terrifying. But this is talking in can’t-be’s.”

Moogle Girl nodded. Yes. Sephiroth’s mother would indeed be terrifying.

“Don’t forget to mention the material problem,” Tomo said.

“Right. Another thing,” Boomchi said. She took a ball of materia from her bag. “Our materia is becoming useless. It’s a worldwide phenomenon.”

“Worldwide?” Moogle Girl said. “I thought it was just with us.”

“A lot of useless materia has been brought in by the Flightless too.” Kunsel said. “They…we accept materia as payment for keeping Edge safe from monsters. But if a portion doesn’t work…”

“Most doesn’t work! That’s what I’ve been _telling_ everyone,” Moogle Girl said. “But it just needs time. I told everyone to carry it on their bodies and then it’s fine.”

“No it’s not,” Kunsel said. “Only the materia you and your hundred group leaders carry with you, are changing. The materia of the rest of the children, doesn’t change.”

“Huh? I didn’t hear this!” Moogle Girl turned on her seat.

“Sorry, I thought you knew. I must have forgotten to tell you.”

“Then how come everyone has functional materia?” she said. “The other day when we trained, everyone could use their materia!”

Kunsel looked apologetic, “Consider is solved: the group leaders fill their pockets with nonfunctional materia and they hang out with you. You are the one who gives them instructions. Then at the end of the day, the materia works again, and they give it back to the kids in their group.”

“Really?” Moogle Girl said. This surprised her. “I had no idea.”

“You are the powersource. The group leaders know it.”

Boomchi looked very surprised. She rubbed her forehead. She looked at Tomo.

“Nauti is the materia expert,” Tomo shrugged. “You talked most with him. Whatever you think is probably right. What’s your take on this?”

Boomchi still looked stunned. She thought on it, and then said: “Materia is crystallized spirit energy from the Green Lifestream. Life energy from people’s body can command the spheres to do magic. But the Green Stream is dying, that’s why most materia won’t work. If… if you are able to make it functional by being in the central vicinity, it means… that means that _you’re_ a Red-Lifestream, and that you can influence the materia to become part of the Red Lifestream.”

Kunsel said: “Let me rephrase that to see if I understand. In Shin-Ra’s terms, it becomes ‘corrupted’? Does she change it into ‘Materia-SIN’?”

Boomchi said: “Exactly! So since only the Flightless are made up of Red-Lifestream, and the only Red-Lifestream source is your reactor where you and the Flightless reside, or the Northern Crater, Shin-Ra will not have any functional materia any more soon. None at all. And you and your Flightless will be the only ones in the world who can operate materia.”

“Wow,” Moogle Girl said.

“The SilverEIite has agreed Tomo and I could talk to you, to warn you.”

“To warn us?” Moogle Girl asked.

“Yes. Our members in Shin-Ra say that Shin-Ra is going to attack you soon. I suppose the four of us just figured out why. They will want functional materia. They will attack you with full force… and you’re just children.” Boomchi said. “So… use the information.”

“To ressurect Sephiroth,” said Moogle Girl.

“He is the only one powerful enough to stop Shin-Ra.”

Moogle Girl looked at Kunsel. He looked back. Under the table, their hands were still linked. Their grip on one another tightened. She felt strong. She looked at the SilverElite representatives. “On the last Sunday of this month we will ressurect Sephiroth. And we will destroy Shin-Ra,” she said. “Thank you for helping.”


End file.
